


BV 4241 .M66 19 

Morrison, Charl 
1874- 

The American pulpit 


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THE 
AMERICAN PULPIT 


A Volume of Sermons by Twenty-five of 

the Foremost Living American Preachers, 

Chosen by a Poll of All the Protestant 

Ministers in the United States, Nearly 

Twenty-five Thousand of Whom Cast 
Their Votes 


Edited by 
CHARLES CLAYTON MORRISON 
Editor The Christian Century 





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jQem Work 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1926 


All rights reserved 


Copyricnut, 1925, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY; 





Set up and electrotyped. 
Published December, 1925. 
Reprinted January, 1926. 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY 
THE CORNWALL PRESS 


FOREWORD 


The search for the leaders of the clerical mind in 
American Protestantism, of which this extraordinary 
book is the outcome, was undertaken in no spirit of 
idle curiosity or for purposes of mere publicity. It was 
in no sense a contest. There was no candidating, and 
no award. A serious purpose prompted the under- 
taking. It was to get at the mind of the ministry 
for the purpose of getting at the mind of the church. 
It goes without saying that the church’s mind is in 
large measure the creation of its ministers by their 
preaching. In perhaps an equal degree the preaching 
mind reflects the prevailing outlook and faith of the 
church. The mind of the clergy is thus a mirror of 
the standards and thought-currents of the contem- 
porary church itself. But how shall one have access 
to the mind of the clergy as a whole? No doubt there 
are many methods of approach. Obviously, a method 
thoroughly sound, so far as it goes, is to discover the 
few great leaders to whom the rank and file of minis- 
ters look up, whose thoughts and accents are most 
potent and contagious in the wide range of the preach- 
ing profession. Clearly the preaching of these leaders 
should afford a clue to the dominant thinking of the 
ministry as a whole, and thus also a clue to the stand- 
ards of thinking under which the contemporary 
church is operating. | 


[5] 


The American Pulpit 


It was in this spirit and for this purpose that the 
publishers of The Christian Century undertook to find 
the twenty-five most influential and representative 
living preachers of our time. The entire Protestant 
ministry of the United States was polled; ballots were 
put into the hands of about 90,000 ministers in all 
parts of the country—north, south, east and west. 
The poll included ministers of all groups and schools 
of theological thought in all denominations—funda- 
mentalists, modernists, conservatives, liberals—Meth- 
odists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, 
Disciples, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Unitarians, Uni- 
versalists and many of the lesser bodies. Each minis- 
ter was invited to name ten preachers whom he 
regarded as the most influential in the entire range of 
the American church—the men of deepest and most 
prophetic vision, the men of outstanding pulpit power, 
the men whose messages, in his estimation, most vitally 
interpret the mind of Christ, the pulpiteers whose 
thinking most deeply and potently influences the 
thinking of the church and the course of events in the 
life of the nation. When the poll closed on December 
15, 1924, the number of ballots returned was 21,843. 
After that date additional ballots came in, bringing 
the total vote almost to 25,000, but without changing 
the result. A total of 1,162 names were voted for. 
Credit was given to every name on every. ballot, and 
when the count was finished the twenty-five men 
receiving the largest number of votes were announced. 
The names appear in this volume in alphabetical order. 
No announcement has been made as to the relative 
standing of the preachers in the list of twenty-five. 
That there was a wide range in the final results can 


[6] 


Foreword 


easily be imagined, but it is believed that even those 
who received the largest number of votes will prefer 
that no statement of precedence be made. 

It is desirable to guard the reader against attaching 
invidious or fictitious significance to the results of 
this far-flung referendum. The poll has its own inher- 
ent value as an expression by so many ministers of 
their gratefulness and esteem for the men who do most 
profoundly influence their professional life, to whom 
they gladly look as leaders, and whom they think of 
as rendering pre-eminent service in the spiritual life 
of the nation. The ministers were asked to designate 
from among their colleagues those whom they regarded 
as their greatest leaders, but the word “greatest” was 
defined for them in terms of objective service. There 
is no infallibility in the method or its results. Cer- 
tainly no suggestion of an attempt to get at the secret 
of the way men rank with God can be attributed to 
the procedure. The result is simply what it is, a com- 
posite register of the reaction of the rank and file min- 
ister after searching his mind to discover the preachers 
who have most deeply influenced him and who seem 
most vitally to interpret the mind of Christ. 

Not the least gratifying aspect of the adventure has 
been the unmistakable tokens of humility and surprise 
with which the result has been received by the chosen 
ones. Expressions of unpreparedness for so high an 
honor came in from every man. These were accom- 
panied by words of the utmost affection toward their 
brethren, words limpid with tenderness “for the good- 
will of my brethren in our goodly, gracious calling,” 
as one letter expressed it. One says, “I only wish that 
I had been more serviceable to my brethren.” An- 


[7] 


The American Pulpit 


other cannot see how his “little ministry could have 
won a recognition in so general an expression; I 
endeavor only to be a preacher of the simplest gospel 
messages and to use the little ability God has entrusted 
me with to declare the fact of my faith and trust in 
him and his great cause.” Another warns, facetiously, 
against publishing the sermons: “If you print the ser- 
mons the vote will be 4 mystery, opaque and heavy.” 
Another who was reluctant to accept the dignity con- 
ferred upon him, points out that “the judgment day 
will show that a great many men of wider and more 
enduring influence were passed over by your voters. 
I imagine,” he continues, “that we shall discover then 
that some of the most powerful persons in the world 
were not very widely known among men, but were very 
well known on high.” 

All of these men of God think of themselves as 
fellow-servants of the least of their brethren. They 
all know they are not great. But their brethren know 
they are great! 

A word about the sermons. Each of the twenty-five 
preachers was asked to contribute a sermon “which 
springs from your own heart of hearts, and expresses 
what you consider to be, either in fact or in aspiration, 
the characteristic note of your ministry.” The ser- 
mons in this volume are the answers of these preachers 
to that request. I believe the collection, taken as a 
whole, is a most authentic deliverance from the heart 
of the contemporary pulpit. It thus affords a clue to 
the mind of the whole ministry of America, and 
through the ministry to the mind of the church itself. 


CHARLES CLAYTON MorRISON. 
December 1, 1925. 


[8 ] 


CONTENTS 


PORE WORD. volt. uses 


Tue SENSE OF HEARING 
By Cuaries R. Brown 


CHARACTER AND WorK . . 
By S. Parkes CADMAN 


From THE NATURAL TO THE SPIRITUAL . 
By Henry SLoANE CoFFIN 


ABOVE THE SNAKE LINE .... . 
By Russevt H. Conwetu 


THe Open Doors . }) jzal TIM... 
By Harry Emerson Fospick 


JOURNEYS Out AND HoME ... . 
By CuHarites W. GILKEY 


THE SENSE OF OBLIGATION . . . . 
By Gerorce A. GorDoN 


Slee CTOV PELE SEIPS igo eu ten ee 
By Newest, Dwicut Hmuis 


SHINING STARS OF EXPECTATION . . 
By Lynn Haroitp HoucH 


CRRA TOA RE Mame To Tae eh ite te wee 
By Epwin H. Hucnues 


Tue New CoMMANDMENT ... . 
By Cuaries E. JEFFERSON 


MME UT ROO Ko de eae crag Reh 
By Francis J. McConneiu 


[9] 


PAGE 


27 


43 


107 


123 


Contents 


PAGE 

DHE, INTERPRETATION OF) LIFE .c,. VS ew Wie enon 
By WiLu1AM Fraser McDowe.u 

(LHE VIRGIN: Bieta: OF JESUS) amet ieee le eer le eeronnes | ey 
By Marx A. MatTtHEews 

CHRIST, \OUR) RELIGION |). Peep oats 
By Witu1AM Pierson MERRILL 

THE MIND OF CHRIST... | Myveeenain oy eee an 
By G. CAMPBELL Morcan 

Tur PRESENCE PME UN hi rn ite Siamese ie 2 
By JoserpH Fort Newton 

THerei is Noruing So ae ee et 
By Merton S. Rice 

WALKING IN) GALILES (000 Oe oe 
By Freperick F. SHANNON 

Tue Curist WHo Lives In Men . .... . 297 
By Rosert E. Speer 

Tue Victorious Lire MAE OS TS en) cr ey 
By Joun Timoruy Stone 

Foop.For A’ HUNGRY WORLD 28) 20) ee 
By Wru1AM A. SuNDAY 

EVoLUTION AND RELIGION De OU ge gly 6 eke a, en 
By Ernest Fremont Titre 

Aw AprouaTe (Gosprtt) i) uee We ne a 
By Georce W. Truett 

Tr OLp! Ruccen CRoss, We ee 


By James I. VANCE 


[10] 


THE AMERICAN PULPIT 





CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN 


Dean Brown was born at Bethany, West Virginia, in 
1862, and grew up in Lowa, where his father was a farmer. 
He was graduated from the state university of lowa with 
his A.B. degree in 1883 and his A.M. degree in 1886, and 
from the school of theology in Boston university with his 
B.D. degree in 1889, spending a year afterward in Harvard 
divinity school. He was in the pastorate for twenty-two 
years, first at Wesley Chapel, Cincinnati, 1889-92, then at 
Winthrop Church, Boston, 1892-96, and finally at First 
Congregational Church, Oakland, California, 1896-1911. 
At the height of his ministry in Oakland he was called to 
Yale Divinity School, as dean, where he has been since 
1911, fourteen years. 

Dr. Brown’s fame as preacher in Oakland was augmented 
by the publication of a notable volume on The Social 
Message of the Modern Pulyit, which profoundly impressed 
the church leadership of America and led to his call to his 
Yale task. Twenty-three other titles bear his authorship, 
of which the best known are: The Art of Preaching, Why 
I Believe in Religion, The Religion of a Layman, Abraham 
LInuncoln, The Main Points, The Larger Faith, The Master’s 
Way, The Story Books of the Early Hebrews, The Honor 
of the Church, Faith and Health, The Young Man’s Affairs, 
What is Your Name?, Yale Talks, Living Again, Two Para- 
bles, Five Young Men, and Ten Short Stories from the 
Bible. 

For twenty years he has been a favorite preacher in the 
colleges of the country, being regularly on the list of preach- 
ers at Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, Chicago, Williams, 
Amherst, Lafayette, Vassar, Brown, Bryn Mawr, Smith, 
Wellesley, Mt. Holyoke. He has received honorary degrees 


[13 ] 


The American Pulpit 


of D.D., LL.D., and 8.T.D. from Yale, Oberlin, Brown, 
Ohio, Wesleyan, and Boston universities. Dean Brown has 
traveled widely in Europe, Palestine and the Orient. He 
supplied the pulpit of Silvester Horne in London the entire 
summer of 1911 and on one of his trips abroad spent some 
time in Russia. 

As pastor of his great church in Oakland, Dr. Brown 
kept in close touch with the university on one hand and 
the organized labor movement on the other. He was in 
demand as a lecturer at Leland Stanford Junior university 
on ethical and Biblical subjects, and for six years held 
membership in the Central Labor Council in Oakland, made 
up of delegates from all the labor unions. The council met 
every Monday night and Dr. Brown, representing the min- 
isters’ union, had a seat, a voice and a vote like any other 
delegate. This experience, enriched by social study through 
the years and by a multiplicity of similar sympathetic 
contacts with the life of working people, has given a kind 
of social tone and authority to all his preaching. 

In 1924 the World’s Work offered a prize of $500 for the 
best sermon. Over thirteen hundred sermons were sub- 
mitted. Dr. Brown offered a sermon on the words, “Such 
as I Have,” and was awarded the prize. The sermon was 
published in World’s Work for June, 1924, and appears 
also in the author’s little book, What Is Your Name? At 
its biennial meeting in Kansas City in 1918, he was made 
moderator of the National Council of Congregational 
Churches, an honor which he carried for two years, deliv- 
ering the retiring moderator’s address at the biennial meet- 
ing at New Haven in 1915. While President Wilson was 
at the Paris Conference in 1919, Dr. Brown was invited 
by former President Taft to Join a group of six speakers 
in a tour across the continent, speaking at great gatherings 
held in the interest of the league of nations. The distin- 
guished party spent over a month in this tour, traveling 
together in a single sleeper for the entire trip. 


[14 ] 


THE AMERICAN PULPIT 


THE SENSE OF HEARING 
By CHARLES R. Brown 


How many of you, I wonder, have ears! I do not 
mean these things on the sides of our heads—so far 
as I can see from here we are all equipped with two 
apiece. They will take care of acoustic vibrations, 
translating them into terms of personal consciousness. 
I am thinking of something more important than all 
that; the Master was, when he said, “He that hath 
ears to hear, let him hear.” I am thinking about a 
full-fledged, well-rounded sense of hearing, which is 
quite another thing. 

We can all hear eighty thousand people yelling at 
a football game in the Yale Bowl. We can all hear a 
brass band moving down the street playing one of 
Sousa’s best. We can all hear the roar of the stamp 
mill crushing the gold out of the quartz. But there 
are other sounds more significant than all that noise. 
Can you also hear those voices which speak from a 
deeper level? Let me ask you to listen for those 
other voices as they speak in the quiet of this hour. 
There are three of them. 


I 
First, the voice from within! However it came 
about, there is something in each one of us which says 
[19 ] 


The American Pulpit 


“ought” and “must.” It says: “This is the way, walk 
in it! This line of action would be wrong, spurn it!” 
The origin of this sense of right and wrong is not 
easily traced. Its psychological beginnings are lost in 
the dim past. But it is there. It has not been left 
out of any normal human life. Can you hear that 
voice? Do you hear it as clearly and as steadily as 
you ever did, or are you getting “hard of hearing,” as 
we say, in the moral realm? Alas, for the man who 
puts the silencer on that voice! The man who turns 
a deaf ear to its commands will reach the point, by 
and by, where they will cease to trouble him and he 
will find himself morally deaf and morally dead. 

How would you define this voice from within which 
we call conscience? Here is a definition given by a 
philosopher, and I know of none better: ‘Conscience 
is the soul’s sense of right and wrong as regards its 
motives.” It has to do with the purposes and intents 
of each man’s heart. The form and content of an 
action are to be determined in the light of reason 
and experience, but the purpose of each man’s life is 
declared by that voice from within. He knows whether 
he means to do right or to do wrong, to help or to 
harm, to do God’s will or to do something else of his 
own choosing. Touching the intent of each life, the 
court of conscience is a court of last appeal. Any man 
who does not know whether he wants to do right or 
not is a moral idiot. 

Here then is the real Mount Sinai, not away yonder 
in Arabia, but inside! It speaks always in the impera- 
tive mood—“‘Thou shalt!” “Thou shalt not!” When 
the boy Christ stood in the temple in the presence of 
the doctors, the voice from within bade him say: “TI 

[16 ] 


The Sense of Hearing 


must be about my Father’s business.” When Martin 
Luther faced the powers of church and state urging 
him to recant under threat of the direst penalties, it 
was the voice from within which bade him say: “Here 
I stand! God help me, I can do no otherwise!” He had 
put his hand to the plow and he would not turn 
back until he had laid open a clean, straight furrow 
across the religious life of a continent. When William 
Lloyd Garrison faced the mob in the streets of Boston 
which was howling him down and threatening to lynch 
him for advocating the abolition of slavery, it was 
the voice from within which made him say: “I am in 
earnest; I will not retract; I will not equivocate and 
I will be heard.” Thus conscience makes heroes or 
cowards of us all, according to the set of our sails. 
The voice from within is a mighty thing; it makes 
and shapes the destinies of men and of nations. It 
works righteousness and subdues kingdoms; it changes 
weakness into strength and turns back the armies of 
evil. It laughs at the violence of fire and scorns the 
edge of the sword. Gravitation, steam, electricity, all 
these mighty forms of energy have their place, but 
they are the servants, not the masters of human life. 
“Have dominion over them all,” God said to man at 
the start—they are here to serve his ends! But man, 
made in the likeness of God, the only created being, 
so far as we know, with capacity for spiritual fellow- 
ship with his Maker, is set to rule. And when he 
hearkens to that voice within, his strength is as the 
strength of ten because his heart is pure. The most 
stubborn fact that statesmen or military despots have 
to deal with is that might of conscience where it be- 
comes crystalized into the moral sentiment of a race. 
[17 ] 


The American Pulpit 


It was the austere morality of Cromwell’s army 
which made it so terrible in the eyes of the enemy. 
The soldiers who made up that army of Ironsides, 
according to the testimony of Macaulay, of Goldwin 
Smith, of John Morley, and of other historians who 
touch upon that period, became the wonder of the 
world for their moral integrity no less than for their 
heroic valor. They took scripture texts for their coun- 
tersigns; they sang the hymns of the faith for their 
battle-cries; and when they marched against the most 
renowned battalions of Europe, somehow no opposing 
force was able to stand before them. The voice from 
within, heard and heeded, clothes any life with power 
from on high. 

What a tragic thing, then, for any man to feel him- 
self becoming morally deaf! Men can live without 
eyes, without ears, without the sense of smell. They 
do in all the lands of earth. No man can live without 
the sense of right and wrong. There are men who 
are trying to do it, but they are dead. They are as 
dead as Lazarus. , They are deader than Lazarus was, 
because they have been dead longer. In fact, all the 
statements made about Lazarus in the Bible could be 
made about them. It is a terrible thing to have five 
senses but to be without the sense of right and wrong. 
When a man no longer feels the sting of pain in doing 
wrong, he is atrophied at the top. He is no longer 
a man—he is a corpse. 

Here is a story told by a well-known Frenchman. 
He was not a theologian, but an artist. He had studied 
life along the boulevards of Paris. He shows us a 
man who had been in prison nineteen years. The man 
escaped and under an assumed name he made a fresh 

[18 ] 


The Sense of Hearing 


start. He became prosperous and happy. He was 
the mayor of the city where he lived. He was using 
his wealth to minister to the needs of the unfortunate. 
One day another man, who strongly resembled him in 
personal appearance, was arrested and brought into 
court. The officials said that this man was “Jean Val- 
jean” (which was the former convict’s name), and 
they were about to send him to the galleys for having 
broken jail. Then the question came to the real Jean 
Valjean, “Shall I allow the law to take its course, or 
shall I tell them that I am the escaped convict, and 
suffer the consequences? Would it be right for me to 
give up this honor and prosperity which I have won 
by heroic effort? Would it be right for me to leave 
these needy people, whom I am helping, to their fate? 
This other old man will soon die anyway—had I not 
best live on in freedom as a generous public benefactor, 
rather than go to prison again as Jean Valjean?” He 
reasoned it all out and decided that it would be best to 
let the old man go to the galleys in his stead. “Then,” 
the author says, “there came a loud burst of hideous 
laughter from within.” It was cruel, mocking laugh- 
ter; it was the soul laughing at itself in the hour of its 
defeat. He could not endure it—he went to the court- 
house and proclaimed himself Jean Valjean. And then 
his soul, which had been walking in darkness through 
those strange, hard hours, saw a great light. 

Take heed, then, how ye hear! Listen at the doors 
of your own soul for that voice from within which 
tells you what you are! It isa glorious thing when it 
can be said of a man, “He hath a peace above all 
earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience.” If you 
are aware of any dullness at that point, if the still 

[19] 


The American Pulpit 


small voice within seems to be losing its resonance, 
then take prompt measures for your own relief. Go 
straight to him who placed his fingers in the ears of a 
deaf man in Galilee saying, “Be opened!” He still 
opens the eyes of the blind, unstops the ears of the 
deaf and causes the souls of men to live. 


“TT 

In the second place, there is the voice from without! 
No man liveth unto himself—he cannot if he would. 
“We are all members one of another,” in a certain 
domestic and social, political and economic solidarity. 
If one member suffers, other members suffer with it. 
“The head cannot say to the foot’—the highest cannot 
say to the lowest—“I have no need of you.” We are 
shipmates on a common voyage. We are messmates at 
a common board. We are set here to learn the high 
art of living together—we cannot live at all on any 
other terms. 

It is imperative, therefore, that every man should 
be able to hear what his fellows are saying with their 
lips and with their lives. He will have a lonesome 
time if he lacks that power; his life will become as 
barren as a sand pile. Artemas Ward said that he was 
once sent for the winter into a logging camp in the 
Maine woods with a gang of forty men. The other 
thirty-nine were Norwegians who spoke no English. 
“That fact,” he said, “threw them a good deal to- 
gether; and it also threw me a good deal together 
for I could not speak Norwegian.”’ Any one who can- 
not understand the hopes and fears, the needs and 
interests of his fellows, is in for a lonesome winter. 

Here is a realm of being which lies deeper than 

[ 20 ] 


The Sense of Hearing 


acoustic vibrations! It takes mind, heart, soul to 
hear the best of anything. How much does any one 
hear of that which is uttered when he is physically 
present? How much of a lecture on Browning, or on 
Greek art, on chemistry or the French revolution or 
the Christian religion? He is there, but how much 
does he hear? It all depends. Men get as they bring. 
How much does he bring in the way of perception, 
appreciation, capacity to make response? If he lacks 
mind, heart, and soul to enter into the deeper meaning 
of that which is being uttered, he might just as well 
be off in the Maine woods with those thirty-nine 
Norwegians. 

You are constantly meeting people who are thus 
cut off. Well-to-do people who cannnot understand 
the language or the longings of the poor! Women of 
leisure and culture who can scarcely exchange a half 
dozen sentences with women who work for their liv- 
ings with their hands! College men who sometimes 
become so narrow and pedantic in their little round 
and round upon the campus that they do not know 
what the man in the street is saying, and they cannot 
talk to him! Healthy, happy people, who never hear 
the hoarse call of the defectives and the delinquents 
who need a strong arm, a wise head, and a warm heart 
to set them in a worthier mode of life! Alas, for that 
social deafness which springs from a lack of sympathy 
for others—it is pitiful, it is tragic! He that hath ears, 
let him hear! 

Here are ships sailing out upon the wide ocean from 
a dozen different ports—New York, Boston, Baltimore, 
Liverpool, Rotterdam, Bordeaux! They take as many 
different routes and they are so far apart they never 

[21 | 


The American Pulpit 


see one another by day or by night. But they are all 
equipped with wireless and radio. They whisper to 
each other across the wide stretches of open sea. If 
any ship is in distress the cry for help, “S.0.5.,” goes 
out and relief comes as fast as steam can bring it. 
But to maintain that sense of mutual protection, every 
ship must carry its own receiver adjusted and attuned 
to the wave lengths sent out by all the rest. It must 
be able to hear. A deaf ship is a dead ship, so far as 
giving help in time of need goes. 

Here are men and women, setting sail from all the 
ports of earth for the great voyage of life! They 
too go down to the sea in ships, prepared to do business 
in great waters. The seas they sail are swept by 
storms and they are fraught with all the perils of the 
deep. What a frightful thing for anyone of them 
to sail those high seas, selfish, heartless, indifferent 
to the calls which come, neither hearing nor heeding 
these more subtle forms of appeal which come from 
those who suffer from doubt and discouragement, from 
want and pain, from spiritual defeat and moral ship- 
wreck! There are lives which are sailing the high seas 
of human experience in all the chill and loneliness 
which belongs to the frozen regions around the north 
pole. Selfishness is the frigid zone of human life, I 
care not what may be its latitude and longitude. 
There are people so downright selfish that a clinical 
thermometer inserted in the heart rather than the 
mouth would show sixty below zero. 

How sensitive Jesus was—how quick to respond! 
He could hear the faintest whisper of human need. 
He could scarcely walk through a crowded street with- 
out inviting the touch of pain upon the hem of his 

[ 22] 


The Sense of Hearing 


garment which had healing in it. When that guilty 
woman cried at his feet in Simon’s house, he under- 
stood everything, even though she had not uttered 
a single word: “Go in peace,” he said, “thy sins 
are forgiven. Thy faith hath saved thee.” When 
he hung upon the cross in agony, he heard the broken 
whisper of a thief: ‘Lord, remember me.” He passed 
through the gates of paradise carrying that penitent 
robber in his arms. The Son of man could hear. 
Humanity at its best always hears the ery of need. 
What would be the use of living if we could not hear 
and make response! He that hath ears, let him hear 
the voice from without. 


III 


Finally, there is the voice from above! ‘He that 
formed the eye, shall he not see? He that formed the 
ear, shall he not hear?” He that gave man the power 
of speech, shall he not speak in tones which all can 
understand? To whom should we go, if not to him— 
he has the words of eternal life. The voice supreme is 
the voice of the eternal God. He is here at this moment, 
waiting to speak to everyone who has ears to hear. 
When a man prays, he takes down the receiver to 
listen to the voice of God. Prayer is not all petition— 
it is communion, fellowship, conference with him who 
is above all and near us all. Prayer has in it the ele- ° 
ment of give and take. It is the active interchange of 
thought and desire with the Most High. And that sense ° 
of contact between these finite spirits of ours and the 
Infinite Spirit enriches our lives beyond any other 
exercise known to the mind of man. Listen until you 
hear that voice from above! 

[ 23 | 


The American Pulpit 


He is not far from any one of us. He stands at every 
door and knocks. If any man hears that voice and will 
open the door, God will come in to establish him in a 
sense of peace and of joy which passeth all understand- 
ing. It will add tremendously to any one’s moral cour- 
age and to his sense of power to be conscious that the 
voice from above is addressing him in tones of com- 
mand, and of high promise, which he can understand. 
“T will hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will 
speak peace to his people.” 

“The word of the Lord” which came to the prophets 
and apostles of old was not a bit of cold print. It was 
a form of personal, spiritual energy—“‘living, powerful, 
sharper than a two-edged sword” for dividing asunder 
those lines of thought, feeling, and purpose which mer- 
ited the divine approval from those that did not. It 
was the spirit of the living God in action impinging 
directly upon these faulty human lives of ours for 
their correction and recovery. Let every man give 
instant and constant heed to that voice from above 
speaking in the depths of his own soul—it is the voice 
of his Maker. 

Here in the Old Testament is the story of a rugged 
man who had just fought a good fight. He had won 
out single-handed and alone against four hundred and 
fifty evil-minded men. But in the nervous depression 
which followed hard upon his victory, when his life 
was threatened by a wicked queen, he sank into the 
trough of the sea and wished that he might die. “O 
Lord, take away my life,” he said. He felt that he had 
nothing left to live for. j 

He fled into the desert. In that same hour there 


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The Sense of Hearing 


came an earthquake breaking the rocks in pieces—but 
the Lord was not in the earthquake. Then there came 
a strong wind tearing its way through the mountains— 
but the Lord was not in the wind. Then there came 
the fierce fire of the lightning—but the Lord was not 
in the fire. When all these forms of physical energy 
had spent their force, “there came a still small voice.” 
And the Lord was in that. All the rest had been mere 
noise, but the still small voice was divine and it brought 
hope, cheer, moral relief to the discouraged prophet. 
He rose up and went forty days and forty nights in the 
strength of that experience to do his duty as a man of 
God. Where any man stands ready to do the will of his 
Maker, that voice from above will speak to him words 
which are spirit and life. 

There was once a young man who stood in the temple 
of worship with a burden of grief upon his heart. The 
wise and good king who had reigned for fifty years in 
beneficent fashion over the country where this young 
man lived, was dead. The nation which the great king 
had served so well must now go forward as best it 
might without his guidance. 

But in that hard hour the young man had a fresh 
vision of spiritual reality—‘“In the year that King 
Uzziah died I saw the Lord.” The upper air was filled 
with angels who were chanting his praise—‘“Holy, 
Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts.” Face to face with 
the divine, the ardent young patriot was bowed down 
with a feeling of unworthiness—“Woe is me, for I am 
a man of unclean lips and mine eyes have seen the 
King”—the real King—‘the Lord of Hosts.” He 
prayed for cleansing until he saw a winged seraph 

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flying through the open spaces of heaven and placing a 
live coal from the altar upon his lips. His sin was 
purged and his iniquity was taken away. 

Then in the eager joy of that moral renewal he 
yielded himself in willing consecration to the highest 
he saw. “I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom 
shall I send? Who will go for us?” It was the voice 
from above, the Voice Supreme, and his heart leaped 
to an instant and final obedience. ‘Here am I, send 
me.’ He was commissioned from on high for his holy 
and arduous task as a prophet of the Most High. 

Whatever else you gain or lose, listen steadily among 
all the discordant sounds of this troubled, intricate life 
of ours for that voice from above. He that hath ears 
to hear, let him hear the voice from within, the voice 
from without, and the voice from above. If his sense of 
hearing is acute he will hear the morning stars singing 
together and all the sons of God shouting for joy. He 
will set ordinary duty to music and make a Te Deum 
of it. Human life is just that—if we will only have it 
so! Oh, that men would praise the Lord for his good- 
ness and for his wonderful gift of hearing to the chil- 
dren of men! 


[ 26 | 


SAMUEL PaRrKES CADMAN 


Dr. Cadman began his Christian life and his ministerial 
career as a Methodist and an Englishman. He was born 
in Wellington, Shropshire, England, in 1864, and was grad- 
uated from Richmond College of London University. At 
the age of thirty-one he came to the United States, accept- 
ing a call to the pulpit of Metropolitan Temple, New York 
_ City, which he resigned in 1901 to become pastor of Central 
Congregational Church, Brooklyn. There he found the 
great and still continuing work of his life. Almost equally 
as famous as his pulpit ministry is his conduct of the 
Sunday afternoon service at the Bedford Branch of the 
Y. M. C. A. in Brooklyn, where he delivers an address and 
answers questions. Drawing upon an encyclopaedic store 
of knowledge, and aided by an alert wit, Dr. Cadman meets 
helpfully a thousand and one questions ranging all the way 
from matters of practical life to philosophic speculation. 
The service is carried by radio, and it is estimated that 
from one to three million persons “listen in” each Sunday. 

Dr. Cadman’s intellectual interests cover a wide range, 
as indicated by his books, the best known of which are 
probably: Charles Darwin and Other English Thinkers 
and Ambassadors of God, the latter being the Drew lec- 
tures for 1920 on the Christian ministry. Other titles are: 
The Victory of Christmas, The Religious Uses of Memory, 
Life of William Owen, The Three Religious Leaders of 
Oxford, and Christianity and the State. At the outbreak 
of the war Dr. Cadman served as chaplain of a New York 
regiment. 

A significant enlargement came to his ministry in 1924 
when he was elected President of the Federal Council of 
Churches of Christ in America, at the quadrennial meeting 


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held in Atlanta, Georgia. In this office he followed Dr. 
Robert E. Speer. Taking seriously his new responsibility, 
Dr. Cadman is devoting such time as he can spare from his 
parish tasks to the congenial function not only of inter- 
preting the Federal Council organization to the churches 
of the country, but of influencing the churchly mind of 
America toward a higher and more efficient type of unity. 
His spirit is essentially catholic and irenic. The causes 
of our unfortunate divisions are small and inconsequential 
in his eyes, and he calls upon all disciples of Christ to 
manifest their union under a common Lord by a closer 
and more organic unity among themselves. 


[ 28 | 


CHARACTER AND WORK 
By 8. Parkes CADMAN 


But uf any man buildeth on the foundation 
gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, stubble; each 
man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day 
Shall declare it, because it is revealed in fire. 
—I Corinthians iii, 12, 13. 


Zeal for the free grace of God toward all believing 
men and women should not tempt us to overlook the 
fact that they determine the degree of their immortal 
blessedness. Nor is there occasion to doubt that the 
disparities of the present life will reproduce themselves 
in the life beyond upon an inealculably vaster scale. To 
be sure, they will not arise hereafter in unequal oppor- 
tunities or arbitrary privileges, yet every conceivable 
diversity created by specific grades of character will 
reappear in the future realm. There is a minimum of 
attainment below which no redeemed human destiny 
ean fall; a diligence and fidelity for righteousness com- 
mon to those who have laid hold on eternal life. From 
that basis as a starting point upward, man’s spiritual 
development has marked variations. No arithmetic 
could express the number or the contrasting magni- 
tudes of the starry spirits of Christ’s paradise. There, 
as here, they differ in their capacity for so noble and 
majestic an inheritance as that of the saints in light, as 
well as in the extent and excellence of their acquisitions. 


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I 

Since what men do reacts upon what they are, St. 
Paul’s doctrine that the felicities of heaven wait upon 
sacrificial self-forgetting toil is entirely just and reason- 
able. In brief, the homeland in which the Everlasting 
Father presides is a democracy of opportunity and an 
aristocracy of character. It has one prevailing atmo- 
sphere of moralized affection, but those who enjoy its 
splendors range from spiritual infancy to measurable 
perfection. One personality is meager and barren of 
achievement; another is radiant and sceptered; its dis- 
tinction being the sequence both of salvation and of 
conspicuous service. As with the Lord, so with his 
disciples, the holy land determines the height of 
enthronement. In the text, therefore, the apostle 
implies the serenity and satisfaction of the pure in 
heart who have added to the general aggregate of good- 
ness. On the other hand, lukewarm or lazy Christians 
suffer the keen mortification due to consciously wasted 
life, and realize that they must now take up the disci- 
pline and the effort that long since should have been 
surpassed. In the context St. Paul reminds his readers 
of the doom that overtakes flagrant apostasy: “If any 
man destroyeth the temple of God, him shall God 
destroy.” Indeed, the entire passage is a wholesome 
treatment of the future in the light of past and present; 
yet one free from the illusions of finality. It indicates a 
heaven which the deserving ones can gladly anticipate, 
and a hell which, at least, is believable. For those who 
accept his conclusions, as I do, St. Paul shows that 
there can be no more red-handed betrayal of self or 
of others than to confront the mystery of the here- 
after without an equipment of all possible godliness in 


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Character and Work 


character and deed. By the same token, there can be no 
severer disillusionment beyond death than to see one’s 
cherished projects disappear because they are not fit 
for preservation. The retroactive application of these 
stern yet magnanimous principles would reverse many 
of earth’s pet policies. Nevertheless, it is a consolation 
that though ignored here, those principles will be infal- 
libly asserted in that great assize where the last shall 
be first and the first shall be last. 


It 


Emotional or imaginative rhapsodies upon the 
environment of the blessed have some decided advan- 
tages. It is permissible that burdened and weary souls 
should be eased and stimulated by assurance that 
reunion with their loved ones will absorb the shock of 
death’s momentous transfer. But let us not lull our 
apprehensions of the inerrant judgment to come with 
unctuous melodies about “‘sweet fields arrayed in living 
green,” and a city so glorious that the richest symbol- 
isms of the Orient falter at its description. To enter 
that celestial abode and there face those whom we 
have lost awhile as self-confessed recreants; saved, 
though as by fire, is a meeting sufficiently painful to 
kill the sweetest bliss. The reproach is the more bitter 
when it is willfully incurred. Contrary to the sentimen- 
talism which usually defeats clear and balanced think- 
ing, the blessed lot of those beyond is not specially 
reserved for those who have failed here. If such sorry 
creatures enter heaven at all, they do so as objects of 
the divine clemency. 

It is a culmination, not an anticlimax, to bring the 
issue down to the ground we tread, and link it with the 


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circumstances we must wisely employ before they pass 
forever. What is irretrievable cannot be improved. Yet 
those who have been rescued from an earthquake or a 
fire are thankful for their deliverance and for life’s 
renewed openings. The foolish ones who are busy with 
the cap and bells; with the dance and the drink; with 
the making of money and its spending, do not appre- 
ciate the apostle’s subhme philosophy. In them his out- 
breaks of inspired meditation and prediction find no 
lodgment. But words and deeds like his, that cannot 
die, become the property of trained and eager souls 
who realize that God’s call 1s echoed by the text; that 
his overtures are specific, not promiscuous, conditioned, 
not unqualified. While there can be no predestination 
of human choice or action which cancels our freedom 
and responsibility, all human beings have their prede- 
termined periods for character and work. The span of 
each individual existence is so arranged that the sum 
total of privilege to which it is entitled goes with it. 
The highest Wisdom counts beforehand the tale of our 
years, and fixes the ebb and flow of their vital tides. 
The susceptibility and zest of youth, the strength and 
reticence of mature manhood, the mellowness of age; 
the heart’s awakening time, the educational season for 
the conscience, the reason, and the will are as correctly 
calculated as the motions of the planetary system. We 
may damage or dismiss the gifts thus bestowed upon 
us in a natural sequence which is also supernatural. 
But we cannot recall these periods or their native 
impulses. We can only do as the farmer does—sow in 
the spring, reap in the autumn, and be as good hus- 
bandmen for the soul as he is of the soil. 

This fixed process, which is too rigid for the sluggard, 


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Character and Work 


ushers in the winter of his discontent without consult- 
ing his listless improvidence. Since infinitude of time 
is neither his nor ours, and what we are to become here- 
after we must begin to be here, the skillful spiritual 
artisan will be jealous of his working days. He will 
recall that sun dials and clocks were the harbingers of 
civilization: that no race rose to mastery till it had 
measured out the minutes as well as the hours. Man 
has not passed from stone to bronze, from iron to steel 
—and to its countless contrivances, without a jealous 
conservation of physical life’s duration, power, and 
purposes. In like manner he who will successfully 
contend for honorable life beyond the grave must heed 
the pregnant saying of our Redeemer: “My Father 
worketh even until now, and I work.” 


III 


The selection of materials for eternity’s preparatory 
labor is next in order. Two classes are named in this 
first Corinthian letter: the rare and imperishable; the 
ordinary and corruptible. By his use of metaphors the 
apostle points the plea for redemptive verities. Some 
doctrines, he tells us, tend to the purification and 
enlargement of character. Others leave it poorer than 
it was before: cheap, fickle, uncomely. Gold and silver 
are synonyms of wealth and ornamentation; marble 
and porphyry of strength and endurance. Wood, hay, 
and stubble are the shibboleths of weakness, worthless- 
ness, and impermanence. Without wishing to intrude 
irrelevant moralizings, would it not be considerate 
for those who place dogma above the realities it is 
intended to formulate, and a militant orthodoxy or 
heterodoxy above the charity without which all else in 


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Christianity is nothing, to inquire if they have chosen 
the perishable or imperishable material for life’s 
upbuilding? It is needless to say that neither theo- 
logical controversialists nor official teachers of the 
Church or guides of the State have any monopoly of 
the choice. With the spread of God’s kingdom all its 
members inevitably are made communicative. They 
deal with the facts and the factors which generate vari- 
ous qualities of character, and are obligated, not only 
to possess its highest elements, but to implant them in 
their fellows. 

Some ideals, theories, convictions are to humanity 
what the precious metals are to coinage, and marble 
and porphyry are to palaces. Other ideals, theories, 
convictions are the exact opposite; and comparable 
only to hay or stubble. It is a maxim often ignored by 
religious people that the lasting substances are the 
hardest to operate. Granite and gold cannot be handled 
as expeditiously as wood, reeds, and plaster. So the 
primitive tribes, with no facilities for lasting construc- 
tion, covered the open spaces of the jungle with their 
huts and shanties. These had serious drawbacks; one 
lick of flame, or a midnight foray by the foe, and they 
vanished. It 1s excusable in the Kaffir that he should 
build as he must. It is inexcusable in the Christian that 
he should in any way divert the building of human 
character from the beauty, truth, and goodness which 
are in Christ Jesus. Nor is the warning superfluous. It 
is just as easy to inflate religious propaganda with 
windy notions, emotional outbreaks, false teachings 
about war and peace, and vain or contradictory ordi- 
nances as it was to grow Jonah’s gourd in a night that 
a worm may smite it down with the dawn. 


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Character and Work 


IV 

Unless I am mistaken, the chronic perils of Christen- 
dom are twofold: the subjection of Christ’s spiritual 
dominion to merely prudential aims, and the leaning of 
institutional religion toward those casuistries which 
have defamed its history. Some popular presentations 
of the Faith bulk large to the eye. They are much 
praised, and reckoned impregnable defenses of Zion. 
Their pinnacles of apologetic and eloquence often 
excite the admiration of the thoughtless multitudes. 
They reflect the enchanted glance of the politic and the 
worldly wise on their radiant fronts. Yet the devout 
mind goes back to the lakeside in Galilee and heeds 
once more the Voice that set all issues in a wholesome 
context, saying: “Everyone therefore that heareth 
these words of mine, and doeth them, shall be likened 
unto a wise man, who built his house upon the rock: 
and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the 
winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: 
for it was founded upon the rock. And everyone that 
heareth these words of mine, and doeth them not, shall 
be likened unto a foolish man, who built his house upon 
the sand: and the rain descended, and the floods came, 
and the winds blew, and smote upon that house; and it 
fell: and great was the fall thereof.” 

The Temple not made with hands was decreed in 
this constitutional law of the process of character build-' 
ing. Its edifice does not arise, as a rule, in response to’ 
the great and learned of the world. Its unblemished 
strength, its stones of living souls, redeemed and pre- 
cious, its fidelity, proof against the lures of sensuous 
delight or profit, have been contributed by saints and 
heroes who counted earth’s rewards and emoluments as 


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less than refuse for the sake of the pattern in the 
Mount. The judgment fires consumed their dross, but 
left the pure metal in them well refined. They 
cemented with their blood the fortresses which shelter 
religion, law, justice, elevating literatures, science 
which is ethically applied, and the philosophies that 
simplify thinking. They wrestled for the truth which 
has not always been acceptable to professional religion- 
ists. Like Jacob at the brook Jabbok, they were often 
lamed in the conflict, and like him, they emerged from 
it princes of God’s Israel. He is very merciful to us in 
that he allows us to witness from time to time to the 
testing out of the values of character and work. The 
latter enables us to judge the former, and we can have, 
if we will, a conscientious insight into the prolonged 
_ welfare or disaster connected with both. Quite recently 
a conflagration raged in Europe which nearly destroyed 
its civilization. By the glare it spread around the globe 
the densest could discern the cunning shams, the 
painted frauds, the decorated lies, the pompous pre- 
texts, the honor rooted in dishonor, which were the 
combustibles of that holocaust. Faith, Hope, and 
Charity, by the Everlasting Mercy, withstood the fierce 
blastings of the crisis, or we had been as those that go 
down into the pit. Yet no sooner had wounded nations 
crawled from under the smoking ruins than their fatu- 
ous leaders resumed the piling up of wood, hay, stubble. 
The former cities of Japan, where houses are chiefly 
paper and bamboo, were rebuilt every four years, and 
no insurance company would assume risks on them. 
They afford us a parable of much present international- 
ism. What risks does it not assume? It warns us to 
choose well the material used, for the choice is endless. 


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Character and Work 


Have regard for quality, not quantity; for the toll 
your thinking and your doing take from your dedicated 
being, for the patience which ensues in that scarcest of 
virtues—fortitude. 


Vv 


To choose thus, however, conscience must first be 
standardized by Christ’s rule, and scope and freedom 
given it to sanitate every evangelical doctrine. “Had 
it power,” protested Bishop Butler, “as it has author- 
ity, it would indeed govern the world.’”’ No work sur- 
vives unless done from the motives which a truly 
christianized conscience originates. Those who build 
ambitions to occupy the spacious areas, or to fill up the 
fields of vision, or from pride’s promptings rather than 
for God’s glory in human betterment, are left stripped 
and beggared at the last. They should demolish their 
monuments of selfishness and arrogance, while their 
day of grace endures. For as men’s spiritual evolution 
advances they will be as much ashamed of these 
destructive aims as they now are of petty pilferings or 
of detestable enormities. How much otherwise splen- 
did work is vitiated by the poison of egotism! And 
how lenient preachers are toward that poison! By it 
the angels fell, yet knowing this, some pulpit angels 
still take the plunge. Public servants, well-nigh indis- 
pensable as we see them, are infected with its virus. 
Would this or that renowned ecclesiastic, orator, 
reformer, or philanthropist care to have the secrets of 
his or her heart unveiled? If they do not, is it because 
they bring into the unseen Temple we all help to erect 
the lust for prominence which devours its spiritual 
resources? Sinners against themselves, injuring their 

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own souls, they also sin against the general enterprise 
by placing the hay and stubble of mixed motives in 
walls and niches meant for the precious stones of pure 
and undivided incentive. Alas! we all have to fight 
mixed motives, which are truly the most illusive foes. 
These microbes of immorality swarm in us like sum- 
mer flies, uninvited, but they cannot become a part of 
us, nor discredit our~efforts, unless we deliberately 
adopt them. So long as we resist them, searching them 
out with the candle of the Lord, and resenting their 
suggestions, we practice the victorious religion which 
our Lord made his own in the wilderness of the temp- 
tation. 

No greater help is rendered men and women by the 
Spirit of the Living God than to so animate and 
instruct their consciences as to inspire them with a 
blameless rectitude toward life and duty. Christian or 
Hebrew, it is your sense of the holiness of God, and of 
the well being of man that makes you a master builder 
of humanity’s House of Eternal Refuge. The core of 
this sensibility is always experimental. What is the 
grand reality which transforms and hallows even the 
iniquitous, and adds enduring value to that house? It 
is the character-creating power of a conscience fed by 
the truths verified in personal and profound experi- 
ences. No man, however faultless his logic and admi- 
rable his address, has the right to announce as authori- 
tative any doctrine that has not lived, breathed, and 
raced throughout his own spiritual history. I do not 
assert that every religious speculation is negligible. 
The intellect has its insurgent questions to which at 
least tentative replies must be given. But the verities 
by which men are made firm as granite, pure as marble, 

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Character and Work 


refined as gold, chaste as silver, fervent as porphyry, 
are part and parcel of our inmost selves. Their regen- 
erative force is symbolized by these material sub- 
stances. It is useless for us to attempt to make others 
better than we are ourselves or to lead them beyond 
our own attainments into the power of the world to 
come. If what goes forth from us is to translate those 
who hear us into the realm of divine love, compassion, 
pity, and surrender to the supreme Will, we must first 
be of that realm, and sharers of these graces. The East 
has an ancient legend that crystals were once living 
things and propagated each other. The legend is con- 
sistent with the virtues and the vices symbolized in the 
text. We produce after our kind either stuff for the 
burning or costly stones for the Temple, and “the day” 
shall declare which; revealing it by an ordeal that can 
neither be eluded nor minified. 


VI 

Redemption of time, sagacious selection of material, 
painstaking labor from unmixed motives in its shaping 
and use, the cultivation of a conscience void of offense 
before God and man, an experimental realization of the . 
truths we communicate—who is sufficient for these 
things? They are not of our own origination. The 
qualities the text advocates proceed from the creative 
Spirit alone. The quarries of earth do not yield them. 
They come from the heart of Fatherly benevolence 
which beats at the center of all being, and everywhere 
broods over its chaos. The living God who sent his 
Son into the world still imparts to it the secret of man’s 
spiritual transmutation. For our wood he gives us 
iron; for our iron, brass; for our brass, gold and pre- 


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cious stones. This is the divine alehemy which explains 
the church, the Bible, the Over-World and its ringing 
challenge of the under-world. 


RELIGIOUS CRUSADES 

I am convinced that we yearn to put nobler material 
into our work. Our purpose is to be, and to help others 
to become more uniformly lovely of temper, more val- 
iant in devotion to life; to see ministers and laymen 
alike enrapt in mystic spiritual passion, and not spas- 
modically touched by it. Then let us believe that these 
wonders can be wrought in us, and greet with expect- 
ant faith the larger advent of the indwelling Christ. 
Some of us are so engrossed in religious crusades that 
we hazard our religion. We have scarcely time to pray. 
We lift our towering Babels skyward, but because they 
have not been submitted to the control of the God of 
right and justice, what are they but pretentious fuel? 
Our work must have in it the reproductive faith which 
Jesus sought while in the flesh with painful solicitude 
if we are to see that work glorified in the eternity at 
our thresholds. It must not halt at reform, philan- 
thropy, a social evangel, or any other milestone on the 
road to its divine appraisal. It must stop short at 
nothing until it seizes men and women by means of 
resistless grace into salvation. These assertions are 
illustrated by the example of an eminent servant of 
God, the late Cardinal Manning. He was a man of 
simple piety, though astute in tendency, and more 
distinguished for his philanthropic than for his evan- 
gelistic gifts. When he died, a well-known expert 
stated that notwithstanding the Cardinal’s unrelaxing 
efforts to promote the welfare of the industrial groups, 


[ 40 ] 


Character and Work 


it was questionable if he had ever won a single convert 
to Christianity from their constituencies. The one 
thing needful was lacking; learning, eloquence, gravity, 
statesmanship, humanitarianism, and an accurate 
knowledge of men and events were his. He was also a 
prince of the Church; and Newman declared that Man- 
ning was Britain’s foremost preacher. But in building 
the Temple with spiritual stones he was outranked by 
many an humble pastor in rural circuits. 

Let us not attempt any reconciliation with a human- 
ity we do not first strive to reconcile to God, nor fail to 
satisfy our nation’s deepest need, and to cleanse by 
prayer and fasting the mighty heart of its democracy. 
Our main mission is to herald God’s love and holiness in 
Christ for the redemption of our own age from its 
private and public sins, and unto eternal life. This mis- 
sion should be the staple of our thinking and the bur- 
den of our speech. Whatever it involves should be 
expounded in faith, in reason, and for its designed ends. 
If the objection is raised against such a ministry that 
its projects are fanciful, fall back, as did St. Paul, upon 
your soul’s felt communion with Christ. You have 
not chosen him; he has chosen you, and appointed you 
to be fellow workers with God whose toil shall endure, 
and whose joy shall be full in the day of final judgment. 


[ 41 ] 





Henry SLOANE COFFIN 


It is difficult to envisage the multifarious activities and 
ministries of Dr. Coffin. Pastor of the Madison Avenue 
Presbyterian Church in New York, he is also an active 
full-time professor in Union Theological Seminary. The 
inference would be natural that his relation to his church 
is that of preacher only, but such an inference would be 
completely mistaken. He administers an enormous organi- 
zation of workers, volunteer and professional, and himself 
lives as close to his people in his capacity as pastor as does 
any minister who carries half of Dr. Coffin’s responsibilities. 
As professor of practical theology his church affords his 
students a rare opportunity to test their teacher’s instruc- 
tion by observation, and by actual labor in the parish. 
For a “theologue” at Union Seminary to be invited to a 
place, be it ever so subordinate, on Dr. Coffin’s church staff, 
is both an honor and a privilege of service greatly coveted. 
Dr. Coffin has built up his church on the principle of adapt- 
ing it to the actual needs of the community. The ‘“com- 
munity” he conceives in the broadest and most democratic 
terms. He is under no delusion that because his church is 
situated in a wealthy section of Manhattan the whole of 
his community is wealthy and aristocratic. He too well 
knows not only that the East Side is hard by, but that in 
the houses of the wealthy there are many folk whose socio- 
logical classification is in quite different categories. For 
these he believes our Protestant churches must provide a 
ministry and a gospel. This problem of democratizing a 
Protestant church, of lifting it out of the narrowing class 
restriction which is one of its most unchristian character- 
istics, and of making it a humanly catholic institution— 
to this problem Dr. Coffin has set himself with a passion 


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and an intelligence which leaves no ground for wonder at 
the success he has already attained. 

As a teacher of preachers, Dr. Coffin is perhaps as deeply 
loved as any master of the homiletic art in any seminary 
in America. He draws upon what seem to be exhaustless 
reserves of sympathy and imaginative understanding of 
the young minister’s problems, and thus binds students to 
him with the double bond of personal affection and pro- 
fessional respect. He has lived in New York City all his 
life, having been born there in 1877. Yale is his college, 
from which he received his A.B. degree in 1897 and his 
A.M. in 1900, in the latter year receiving also his B.D. 
from Union Theological Seminary. He studied in New 
College, Edinburgh, and the University of Marburg. Two 
pastorates mark his career, the first at Bedford Park Pres- 
byterian Church, New York, and his present pastorate on 
Madison Avenue, which he entered upon in 1905. His 
professorship at Union synchronizes with his second pas- 
torate. Active in denominational affairs, he has been a 
member of the board of home missions, and a director of 
the church extension committee of New York presbytery. 
The colleges and universities of the country offer no more 
hearty welcome to any preacher than to Dr. Coffin. A 
volume of his sermons preached to students was published 
in 1914 under the title University Sermons. Other books 
of his making are: The Creed of Jesus, Social Aspects of 
the Cross, The Christian and the Church, The Ten Com- 
mandments, Christian Convictions, In a Day of Social 
Rebuilding, A More Christian Industrial Order, What Is 
There in Religion? He is also editor of the well-known 
hymnal, Hymns of the Kingdom. Dr. Coffin has been 
honored with the D.D. degree by New York, Yale, Harvard, 
Columbia and Princeton universities, 


[ 44 ] 


FROM THE NATURAL TO THE SPIRITUAL 
By Henry SLOANE CoFrFIN 
“To enter into life”’—Mark ix, 43. 


Have you ever been haunted by a passage of scrip- 
ture? To me there is an overpowering and inescapable 
earnestness in the words of Jesus, read a few minutes 
ago, in which he speaks with such intensity: Better 
for thee to enter into life maimed, crippled, one-eyed, 
rather than whole-bodied to be flung on the rubbish- 
heap and got rid of, as the city of Jerusalem used the 
valley of Hinnom, Gehenna, as a big incinerator to 
destroy its refuse. Wholeness was such a cult with 
Jesus—“I came that they may have life, and may have 
it abundantly”—that one is surprised at his advocating 
_ crippling one’s self—cutting off hand or foot or pluck- 
ing out an eye. We forget his insistence upon the 
extreme difficulty of “entering into life,’ and his frank 
statement that to him the gate seemed narrow and the 
way straightened, and “few be they that find it,” while 
the road to destruction is broad, and the gate wide, 
“and many be they that enter in thereby.”” One wishes 
he had not said that; it sounds harsh. But suppose he 
is trying to report truthfully the facts as he sees them, 
and to tell us that desperate efforts are necessary to 


[45 ] 


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“enter into life’? Truth-telling is always a kindness. 
Who would live in a fool’s paradise and suddenly dis- 
cover himself bitterly mistaken? 

And how exactly Jesus’ conception of “entering into 
life’ corresponds with the scientific view of the way in 
which all creatures have evolved! It seems to be agreed 
that life on our planet began in the seas, and that the 
forest primeval was not that of which Longfellow sang 
in Evangeline, but its remote ancestor—the great 
masses of seaweed which swayed in the warm waters. 
In migration after migration, first plants, then living 
creatures dared the impossible and became dwellers on 
dry land. It was a momentous enterprise for denizens 
of the waters “‘to enter into life” on terra firma. 

Look what was involved. 

First, new breathing apparatus. There is oxygen in 
the water, and fishes take it in through their gills and 
through the membrane which covers their bodies. But 
on land skins had to thicken and the oxygen in the 
atmosphere be captured and passed into the blood 
through lungs. That involved a vast transformation. 

Second, an improved method of motion. In the sea 
creatures may move freely in any direction, up or down, 
forward or backward, right or left, and the water 
upholds their bodies. On shore movement must be 
much more precise, the body must be compact and 
capable of holding itself up, and every muscle must 
respond to the control of the brain. A jellyfish may 
sprawl or float about in the sea, but it would be torn 
to bits on land. You and I, for example, exercise fifty- 
four muscles in the half-second that elapses between 
raising the heel of our foot in walking and planting it 
firmly on the ground again; and happily we do not 


[ 46 | 


From the Natural to the Spiritual 


have to think of any one of them, for all fifty-four move 
automatically in response to our desire to step ahead. 
A finer brain directing a more complex nervous and 
muscular system—that was a mighty advance. 

Third, a new protection for the body against changes 
of temperature. In the sea the differences of cold and 
heat between day and night, winter and summer, are 
far more gradual and far less felt than in the air. Hence 
layers of fat and skins with hair or fur must be devel- 
oped, and the animal’s own blood-heat retained. 

Fourth, a new family and social life. The waters 
form a cradle for the young, but on land they must be 
carried by the parent, or hid in a hole, or safeguarded 
in a nest—that is the beginning of home. In the sea 
most creatures let their young shift for themselves, 
with large losses, so that families have to run up to the 
thousands or millions, and there is no tie between par- 
ent and offspring. On land families are small, and 
there is personal care, and the dawn of social respon- 
sibility. 

All which things are a parable; for “to enter into 
life” as Jesus conceived it was to advance from the 
natural into the spiritual, and closely parallel develop- 
ments are necessary. 


pe 


A finer breathing apparatus. The oxygen of the spirit 
of God—the spirit of trust and hope and love—is dif- 
fused everywhere in small quantities through the ordi- 
nary atmosphere that men breathe. One could not 
raise a family or do business or have friends without 
trust, hope, affection. The more Christian a community 
is, the more of this spirit pervades its homes and shops 


[47] 


~The American Pulpit 


and theaters and public offices, and without being 
aware of it people are living in the spirit. But the best 
town or countryside known to us is oxygenated with 
the spirit of Christ to no greater extent than waters 
are oxygenated where sunlight is falling on their sur- 
face. To enter into spiritual life is like coming up on 
the shore and capturing the far more fully present 
breath of the divinein one’s own soul. Shelley has a 
phrase which expresses the atmosphere of Jesus’ king- 
dom of God, when he speaks of “realms where the air 
we breathe is love.” 

We see a fish out of water apparently gasping for 
breath. It dies from too much air, and from air coming 
to it in a form it cannot utilize. Frankly, how would 
you and I fare in “realms where the air we breathe is 
love’”—such love as the New Testament points to in 
the cross on Calvary? Could we do business in it? Or 
are we accustomed to only such diluted quantities that 
we should be fish out of water in an office or a factory 
or a store where it was the atmosphere? Could we 
function as citizens in it? Or are we so used to national 
selfishness and personal self-interest in forming our 
opinions on public questions, that we should gasp for 
breath? Could we work and worship in a church per- 
vaded by it? Or are we so habituated to the vastly 
reduced amounts of the redemptive spirit of Christ 
that percolate through the churches with which we 
are familiar, that we should be entirely out of our 
element in a congregation which thought seriously with 
the mind of Jesus and spent itself with his self-giving 
to bring lives under his mastery? And this is only 
another way of asking: Could we breathe in God, who 
is love as Christ was love? 


[ 48 | 


From the Natural to the Spiritual 


Nature never takes her forward steps suddenly. 
There are fish today which have developed rudimen- 
tary lungs and come to the surface to breathe; they 
would die if you placed a net an inch below the top so 
that they could not reach the air. Have you and I such 
an elementary spiritual breathing-apparatus? Do we 
pray—consciously entering into God’s thoughts and 
interests and sympathies? Do we accustom ourselves 
to the atmosphere of the New Testament by frequent 
excursions to it and by thinking out our current ques- 
tions in it? Fishes evolved lungs, using part of their 
swim bladders, and so became dwellers in the ampler air 
of our sunny earth. Religion is a developable instinct | 
—developable by those who try to breathe in and live 
by the truth and love and hope of Jesus. This is to 
enter into life—the life of God. 


II 


Precise and controlled movement. There are many 
people who are morally sprawling, and with no more 
compactness and stiffness than a jellyfish. The rough 
edges of decisive issues tear them. When the young 
ruler began to ask his questions of Jesus, he was told, 
“If thou wouldst enter into life, keep the command- 
ments.” They are clear-cut “thou shalt nots’ and 
“thou shalts.” Movement on the terra firma of the 
spiritual forbids flopping about, and drifting this way 
and that, and letting currents carry us. A man must 
hold himself up on his own moral legs, and let his 
every motion be directed by conscience. “If thou 
wouldst enter into life, keep the commandments.” And 
even then the young ruler would only have begun to 
move on the beach; there was more compacting of 


[ 49 | 


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himself to be done if he would settle permanently as 
an inhabitant of the spiritual. He must disencumber 
himself of things which dragged and prevented his easy 
movement. Everything that one is and has must be 
swiftly responsive to the Christ-prompted heart. You 
recall Huxley’s pointed dictum: “The test of being 
educated is, can you do what you ought, when you 
ought, whether you want to do it or not?” With some 
of us the trouble is lack of will-power; we cannot bring 
feelings and temper and power to heel. With others it 
is that our possessions and connections, like this young 
ruler’s, are too spread out, like some flabby and dis- 
tended octopus with numerous feelers and tentacles, 
and we are hopelessly entangled when we exchange the 
morally fluid existence for the decisive life of the 
morally solid and stable. 

You and I say that we wish to be useful Christians, 
active and forthright builders of the city of God, 
through home and industry and citizenship and the 
church. Unquestionably we wish it; but do we will it? 
And have we a controlling will that gets us out to the 
task, that arranges our time, and plans our efforts, and 
manages our outlays? Wishing may do for aquatic 
existence where you can float along with a current or 
let the tide carry you; but willing is necessary on the 
terra firma of the spiritual. “I must be about my 
Father’s business,” “the Son of man came not to.. . 
but to.” There is precise, controlled movement. 

Or are we entangled? One can be tied up in social 
customs, and spend endless time and money on things 
that never advance the community or any individual a 
single inch. One can be entwined in one’s own posses- 
sions—in their acquisition, their care, their enjoyment, 

[ 90 | 


From the Natural to the Spiritual 


their increase and never “enter into life,’ immersed in 
things, not in life. Jesus’ advice to the young ruler 
would be the wisest possible counsel to not a few: “Sell 
and give.” With less, many men and women would be 
far more useful. Possessions may impede personal 
service. Anything which one owns that is undedicated 
and not employed for spiritual ends is like a great limp 
tentacle which some sea-creature is trying to drag 
about on the shore. It must either be got rid of or 
transformed into a spiritual muscle. 

Are we sprawlers and floppers and drifters? or con- 
science-controlled, self-upholding and _ self-propelling 
beings, moving precisely and firmly on God-given 
purposes? 


LEE 


A better protection against atmospheric changes. 
The more developed a soul is, the more sensitive he 
becomes to drops in spiritual temperature. See it in 
Jesus’ career. When he descends from the mount of 
transfiguration, where in prayer and in fellowship with 
the exalted spirits of the mighty past, he has been 
aglow with a passion to free mankind from sin, he 
comes into the despairing company of disciples unable 
to help that father with his possessed boy. The chill 
of their unbelief pierces him. ‘“O faithless generation, 
how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear 
with you?” Again in the supper room he has felt the 
warmth of his disciples’ loyalty: “Ye are they that 
have continued with me in my temptations’; but in 
the garden of Gethsemane, he felt a fall in tempera- 
ture. The three on whom he had counted most went to 
sleep: “What, could ye not watch with me one hour?” 


[51 ] 


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And the point is that despite the changes in spiritual 
warmth, his spirit was not chilled and rendered inca- 
pable of generous and believing activity. He bade them 
bring the afflicted child to him; he went from the sleep- 
ing disciples to a second prayer even more acquiescent 
in his Father’s will than the first, and then went to 
give himself up to the arresting guard. 

How much affected are we by variations in tempera- 
ture? How differently we talk in different groups— 
ardent with the enthusiastic, moderate with the con- 
ventional, cynical with those superior persons whose 
superiority is uniformly critical! In one community we 
are warmed to active Christian service: it is the atmos- 
phere of the place; in another we are shivering or 
frozen into stiff inertia: we have no protection against 
pervasive indifference. With one friend we glow—his 
fervor is inescapable; with another we always remain 
in the temperate zone—an excellent climate for calm 
thinking and moderated action, but unfavorable to 
luxuriant growth and passionate self-abandonment; 
with a third we are in the arctic circle and show no 
more fruits of the spirit than are grown at Point 
Barrow. 

There are few more searching tests to apply to one’s 
self than this: How proof am I against these variations 
of heat and cold? Can I continue, year in and year out, 
“fervent in spirit, serving the Lord,” in a household 
where the rest of the family are not interested in 
religion, in a place of business where my associates 
care for none of these things, in a church where the 
majority of the congregation are not more than tepid? 
It is not easy to raise tropical flowers and fruits in a 
Canadian winter; but it is done. It requires coal and 


[52 | 


From the Natural to the Spiritual 


a greenhouse so well built that it keeps the heat. To 
produce the graces and gifts of the spirit of Jesus in 
New York city, or in any other place you care to name, 
demands a large and constant supply of that spirit— 
fortunately always available—and a resolute conscience 
which retains the atmosphere of Galilee and Calvary, 
and excludes the intrusive chill of an unbelieving, 
unhoping, uncaring world. The spiritual thermometer 
on Mars hill, among those novelty-seeking, endlessly 
discussing Athenians, was many degrees below that on 
the mount where Jesus spoke the beatitudes, but Paul 
had his own furnace and protective covering, and his 
words kindle still. And as for Calvary—look at the 
taunting priests, the staring crowd, the dice-throwing 
soldiers, one fellow-sufferer mocking, and friends sob- 
bing and hopeless. Could anything have been more 
congealing to faith? But from within Jesus uses for 
warmth, as we today employ the forests of a remote 
past in coal, the words of psalmists: “My God, My 
God, why?” “Father, into thy hands I commend my 
spirit.’ There is blood-heat retained against an out- 
ward drop to zero and below—blood-heat that warms 
across the centuries the most generous endeavors of 
today. Jesus entered into life, when another would 
have been spiritually frozen to death. 


IV 
A developed sense of social obligation. One can 
fairly grade the world of creatures by the amount of 
devotion they show to their young or to their own 
herd. There are faint beginnings of this among dwellers 
in the water—among nest-building fish or those vari- 
eties where the mother protects the young in her 

[53 | 


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mouth; but this sense of responsibility—call it embry- 
onic conscience—has advanced by vast strides on the 
dry land. It is certainly the chief factor to be consid- 
ered when we grade people spiritually, and estimate 
whether they have entered into life. Here is a devoted 
parent, but with no community spirit—an aquatic con- 
science. Here is a loyal patriot, but with no sense of 
obligation for the weal of other lands—a conscience 
akin to that of the wolf for the pack. Here is a busi- 
ness-man considerate of the few employees or imme- 
diate associates with whom he is thrown, but without 
imagination to feel the conditions and appreciate the 
state of mind of operatives in a mill whom he rarely 
sees and cannot personally know—a near-sighted con- 
science. | 

Here is a Christian, scrupulously careful about the 
expenditure of his income and eager to be generous, 
but unthinking of the conditions under which his 
income is produced, and never asking if he is worth to 
humanity what it costs to keep him—a class-bounded 
conscience. Here is a churchman interested in the work 
of his own congregation and perhaps in home missions, 
but questioning and disparaging foreign missions—a 
parochial or at best a nationalistic conscience. Here is 
a man with a general sense of obligation for others, 
which leads him to contribute to good causes, but with 
no feeling of responsibility to invest himself in service 
which sets him face to face with men and women who 
need what can only be communicated by direct touch 
of life on earth—a conscience akin to that of fish with 
an instinctive obligation to continue their species, but 
with no sense of duty to care individually for their 
kind. A congregation composed of fishy consciences 


[ 54 | 


From the Natural to the Spiritual 


will make annual offerings for the propagation of the 
genus Christian, but will not be a company of friendly 
men and women reaching out in personal contacts and 
drawing one by one their neighbors and acquaintances 
into the friendship of Christ. Where do you and I 
grade in social conscience? Did not Jesus, by his life 
and above all by that life laid down at Golgotha, reveal 
a more inclusive and more exacting social conscience— 
the all-embracing and self-giving conscience of God? 
To “enter into life” is to come up from this rudimental 
conscientiousness of the natural man—marine con- 
scientiousness as opposed to terrestrial—into the con- 
scientiousness of sons of God. 

What daring it took in denizens of the water to 
attempt the impossible and try to become dwellers on 
terra firma! And what faith! Had they been able to 
forefancy what was involved—a complete remaking of 
themselves—being “born again’—would they have 
ventured ?: Had discussion been possible, how the com- 
placent habitués of the sea would have argued with 
these crack-brained venturers! “A perfectly ridiculous 
project!” And as for the venturers themselves, how 
often must they have failed and been discouraged, and 
how many must have turned back or slipped back 
exhausted with trying, and how many must have had 
to part with fin or tail or scales or feeler or even some 
larger part of their fishy anatomies before they man- 
aged to live on shore! But today, we, who carry tell- 
tale reminders in our own bodies of the aquatic stage 
of evolution take life on land for granted, and earth is 
our native element and the only dwelling-place which 
seems to us natural. One hears a voice saying to those 
pioneers of eons ago: “I will give to thee, and to thy 


[59 | 


The American Pulpit 


seed after thee, the land of thy sojournings.” By faith 
they struggled, and for themselves and their descend- 
ants entered into ampler life. 


V 

Between denizens of the waters and dwellers on 
terra firma there is a large group of amphibians, who 
are in and out of both. “They are typical of ourselves— 
now in one element and now in another in our thinking 
and feeling and living. And notice that fear is the 
great factor that sends an amphibian back to the water. - 
Frighten a frog or a turtle or a newt or an alligator, 
and it will make for the water, if it can. Scare any one 
of us and, like Simon Peter, we deny our Lord and dive 
back into selfishness. But there is an upward urge in 
creatures which makes them crave to reach the sunnier 
existence of the land, and there is a mysterious faith 
that this is somehow possible. Certain species, nat- 
uxalists tell us, are coming ashore even now and con- 
tinuing the evolutionary march which began millions 
of years ago. There isin you and me a craving for the 
spiritual—‘We needs must love the highest when we 
see 1t’’—and an instinctive trust in ourselves and in the 
universe that we can attain to such life as Christ 
revealed. We are scared out of it again and again; but 
faith battles with fear. Are we ready to yield to the 
ventures of trust and to pay the cost of daily struggle 
to enter into life? Maimed, crippled, one-eyed, if need 
be, merciless with ourselves, are we resolved to live? 
The alternative is the rubbish heap. This is the stern 
and exacting summons of the gospel of Christ. 

But it 1s not the whole gospel. Jesus is no pioneering 
leader merely, bidding us follow him, even if it means 


[ 56 ] 


From the Natural to the Spiritual 


mutilating ourselves to keep up with him. “J, if I be 
lifted up, will draw’’; “Come unto me all ye that labor 
and are heavy laden, and I will give”; “Ye will not 
come to me that ye may have life.”’ A figure stands on 
the sunny shore calling to us frightened and doubting 
moral amphibians, fascinating us with the life he sym- 
bolizes and asking us to be his companions and stay 
with him, that with him we may become new creatures. 
He cannot relieve us of the necessity of struggling up 
and of struggling to stay up and of struggling to 
acquire the requisites for sons of God: but he draws 
and he holds—himself the strongest incentive to climb 
up and the staunchest preventive against slipping back 
—and with him we are acclimated and adapted to the 
climate of the kingdom of love. “He that hath the Son, 
hath the life.” 


[57 | 


Ps 


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at Fp anh mie) 
Ae Ha 


7 
rr 


‘Lanes j ‘ By 


eh 


| Ws Ay ee ee 
Ame The Bike ft 


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a mt 


el 





Roi 
Tie r Fa Pika 
f 


RussELL HERMAN CONWELL 


The pastor of one of America’s largest churches, The 
Baptist Temple, Philadelphia, was born at Worthington, 
Massachusetts, in 1843, and spent his early days on a small 
farm situated in the most sterile portion of that mountain- 
ous region. Very early in his youth he was compelled to 
earn his own living, but managed by studying evenings 
to keep on with his classes until he had prepared himself 
to enter Yale College. There he “doubled up,” taking both 
academic work and law at the same time, studying law 
under a tutor. The Civil War interrupted his studies, and 
took him to the field as a captain of infantry. At its close 
he attended the law department of Albany University. 
After graduating he went to Minnesota and began to prac- 
tice. Appointed by the State of Minnesota in 1867 to act 
as its emigration agent in Germany, Mr. Conwell found 
himself standing on the threshold of another sort of career, 
that of newspaper correspondent. His articles to the New 
York Tribune and the Boston Traveler met with such favor 
that he was sent by these papers on a circuit of the globe, 
during which he accepted many lecture engagements in 
India and England. 

Returning, he settled in Boston, where he practised law 
for eight years. In 1879 he was ordained to the Baptist 
ministry, and in 1882 accepted a call to Grace Church, 
Philadelphia. From that date to this he has been its pastor, 
the name having been changed to The Baptist Temple when 
the present great house of worship was erected in 1891. 
For a period of ten years following the opening of the new 
edifice, the congregation was so large that admission was 
limited to ticket holders, and multitudes were turned away. 

On the lecture platform Dr. Conwell has attained nation- 


[59 | 


The American Pulpit 


wide fame. During a period of fifty-one years he lectured 
nearly nine thousand times. He was the intimate associate 
of the platform giants of the classic period of the lyceum 
in America—Gough, Beecher, Wendell Phillips, Everett, 
Chapin, and others. The most famous lecture of lyceum 
history is Dr. Conwell’s “Acres of Diamonds,” delivered 
in every State in the Union over a period of fifty years, 
to more than three million people, and netting the lecturer 
$4,000,000, all of which amount he gave to religious and 
educational philanthropy, being himself, as he put it, “gen- 
erously provided for by a loyal church.” The occasion of 
the 5000th delivery of this lecture was made brilliant by 
the gathering in Philadelphia on May 21, 1924, of an audi- 
ence that filled the Academy of Music. At the conclusion 
of his lecture Dr. Conwell was presented with a loving cup 
by Provost Smith of the University of Pennsylvania, a key 
of solid gold by Governor Tener, representing the freedom 
of the State of Pennsylvania, and an autograph album 
from five thousand friends containing $5,000. 

Dr. Conwell’s ministry has stressed teaching and healing, 
as well as preaching. In connection with his church he 
established the Temple University which enrolls as high 
as eight thousand students each year, and the Samaritan 
and Greatheart hospitals. 

The first book by Dr. Conwell was published in 1870 
under the title, Why and How the Chinese Emigrate. His 
Life of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, his contemporary in the 
great London pulpit, appeared in 1893 and reached a sale 
of 125,000 copies within four months. Other books are: 
How to Live the Christ Life, Effective Prayer, Why Lincoln 
Laughed, Borrowed Axes, and Fields of Glory. 


[ 60 | 


ABOVE THE SNAKE LINE 
By RusspeLtut H. ConwELu 


The story of the prodigal son has taken on a new 
phase to me, and a useful one, without doubt. It is a 
wonder, a marvel, how sayings of Christ and the 
prophets can be found which apply to every circum- 
stance of human life and human thinking. When we 
change our circumstances, or our views of human 
affairs, we find them adjusting themselves to the new 
conditions. We need not be afraid of scientists nor of 
the discoveries of science. Because if science discovers 
a truth, the Bible throws a new light or color which we 
have not observed before. It does not change the Bible. 
It opens it out so that we understand it better. We 
are indebted to science, and we are not afraid of sci- 
ence, nor of any honest investigation in the world. 

This story of the prodigal son took a rather peculiar, 
but an interesting, phase as I thought upon it in the 
last few hours. The prodigal son went down from the 
lovely mountains of Judea to the plains and cities by 
the shore. That is an ancient tradition concerning him. 
He entered the gay city, and, among the wicked and 
licentious people, spent his father’s money and his 
inheritance. Then he was turned over to the swine. 

It reminded me so fully of an old tradition concern- 
ing the Hampshire highlands of the Berkshire hills of 
Massachusetts. In one of his letters the great poet, 
William Cullen Bryant, who so loved the Berkshire 


[ 63 ¢ 


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hills, mentioned the fact that when the hills were first 
occupied by settlers, they found that down in the val- 
leys were very dangerous serpents. The rattlesnake 
was there, the poisonous adder was there, the copper- 
head was there. In order to escape these serpents, they 
built their residences upon the hills. Ancient tradition 
related that there was a “snake line” above which no 
poisonous snake ever crept. If a person builded above 
an elevation of about twelve hundred feet above the 
sea, no poisonous serpents ever bit his children, or 
destroyed his property, or endangered his life. But if 
he built in the valley, he was subject to these deathly 
dangers. In the old times when the country was set- 
tled, every person who approached was advised to 
build his house “above the snake line.” 

Above the snake line the early settlers dwelt—those 
pioneer New Englanders whose emigrants formed the 
foundation of the middle and western states. The 
farms were small, the ground stony and difficult to clear 
for agriculture. The mountains were covered with 
the primitive forest. The valley soil was richer and 
more easily worked, but those wise and pious Pilgrim 
fathers endeavored to build their homes safely “above 
the snake line.” 

Above the snake line they built the red New England 
schoolhouses. In those schoolhouses have been 
inspired poets, scholars, martyrs, missionaries, states- 
men, inventors, philanthropists, teachers, musicians 
and lovely home-makers. There education really 
began for America. There the boys and girls were 
instructed in what they needed to know of the elements 
of a practical education. The red schoolhouse of 
New England—glorified by poets and orators and 


[ 62 | 


Above the Snake Line 


patriots throughout the land, where the eternal friend- 
ships were formed by those who attended them—was 
indeed the palladium of American liberty. They built 
their schoolhouses ‘above the snake line”! 

The churches also were constructed on the mountain- 
tops of that portion of the Green Mountain range 
where Vermont and Massachusetts unite. When the 
farmer leaned upon his hoe, he could look over the 
intervening hilltops and see the spires of many 
churches. They built them in the highest places of 
New England. They could be seen forty or fifty 
miles, and all, like the churches of Peru, Blandford, 
Worthington and Chesterfield, pointed all the people 
by sunlight and moonlight to God. From the cele- 
brated “Mohawk trail’ the traveler’s attention is called 
to churches sixty miles away. The farmer who built 
his house and made his home above the snake line, 
also constructed his place of worship above the snake 
line. 

The churches are built where sin does not enter, and 
where it is safe for children to enter and for all peo- 
ple to worship. It is a wonderful illustration. The 
virus of temptations, the malarias of secret sins seem 
never to be lurking there. Above the snake line there 
is health! 

Saranac lake, in the Adirondacks, famed for the cure 
of tuberculosis, has precisely the same climatic and 
local conditions as are found on the plateaus that 
crown the Berkshire hills. Tuberculosis is not native 
to that region and is never feared. In one of the towns 
of western Massachusetts—the town of Peru—there 
have been but two cases of death from tuberculosis 
since the entrance of civilization. But it is dangerous 

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to descend to the distant valleys and live below the 
snake line. Above the snake line there is health, 
because of pure air and pure water. There is health 
because vigorous exercise is necessary to cultivate the 
stony land in order to make a living. There, too, is 
pure food. The most healthful food that can be found 
grows up where the air and the water are pure. Health 
was found up there above the snake line! 

The illustration goes deep and grows wide as I think 
it out. From the tops of those hills the resident 
enjoyed magnificent distant views of the wider world. 
Down in the dark valley you could see but a few hun- 
dred yards. Down in the valley you are walled in 
by the sides of the rocky cliffs. But on the mountain 
farms you could look away to the Catskills, the White 
Mountains, the Green Mountains, Mount Tom and 
Mount Holyoke, and far south into Connecticut, far 
north into New Hampshire and Vermont, and far 
away into the southern mountains that border the 
Hudson river. Ah, there are beautiful views above the 
snake line! How much further men and women do 
see who live above that moral line! 

The prodigal son went down below that line. He 
lived for a while among the serpents and poisonous 
insects of wickedness, that tempted him on every side, 
in Tyre and Sidon. He went down from that religious, 
praying home above the snake line, down ‘into the 
dark valley, and was bitten by the serpents there. 
What a startling, all-inclosing illustration Jesus 
selected when he told the story of the prodigal son! » 

There in that high land of the Berkshires the sun- 
rise reveals the glory of God, far above the valley, 
before the valleys have escaped the shadows of the 


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Above the Snake Line 


night. Earlier in the morning it shines on the faces 
of the farmers on the hilltop, as they see the approach 
of the coming day with a distinctive glory altogether 
its own. Every land from north to south, and east to 
west, and every continent on earth, has a different sun- 
rise. The colors are peculiar to the locality and to the 
atmosphere. In the Berkshire hills the June or Octo- 
ber sunrise is a glory which great artists travel from 
afar to see. The sunsets, except on the most cloudy 
days, are enriched by thousands of vari-colored kaleido- 
scopic clouds. What a magnificent position for beauty 
it is above the snake line, where the sun rises early 
and sets late! Yes, the prodigal son went down below 
the religious snake line, down where the views were 
narrow and deceitful, down where he could not look 
away upon the white cliffs of God and realize in his soul 
what they all taught. 

The minds of men have a snake line. The charac- 
ters of men have a snake line. In those hills there was 
the spirit of poetry, where the trees seemed to sing, 
where the birds and fowls of the air, and the beasts of 
the field have their tuneful voices. They call in chants 
from hill to hill, which echo back from cliff to cliff. 
Wonderful sounds of music are up there. 

The poetry of life is there. The father of William 
Cullen Bryant, warned against living below the snake 
line, set his home atop the hill, where his son wrote 
those uplifting words: 

So live that when thy summons comes to join 

The innumerable caravan which moves 

To that mysterious realm where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, 
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed 


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By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him and lies down to pleasant. dreams. 


William Cullen Bryant wrote that as he sat beside 
one of the beautiful Berkshire streams, which, dancing 
down from the hillside, sang its own original song and 
inspired him to poetry. It was in these hills that Willis 
found the chiefest subjects for his most sublime writ- 
ing. There Longfellow wrote poetry, and sought his 
wife. These great poets lived intellectually above the 
snake line. They did not descend to the swamps of 
life; they lived where minds were free and hearts were 
pure, and characters were sound. They located their 
hearts where the air was pure! Wonderful waterfalls 
glittered from hillside and flashed from every grove. 
The birds in that land have their peculiar color and 
their peculiar dialect. The foxes that find their holes 
in the broken, rocky mountain sides are of a most fas- 
cinating color. Inspiring birds are there! The whip- 
poorwill, the blue jay, the swallow, the bobolink, the 
meadow lark, and the oriole, so harmonious in all their 
beautiful tribute of praise. Perhaps they are no more 
wonderful than in some other regions. But the birds 
there which live below the snake line are very different 
birds, having very much coarser voices. And there 
were once dangerous birds there. But above the snake 
line, where live the best of the fowl life, there is no 
danger to human beings. 

There, the fish that flash—the speckled trout which 
leaps up the stream, climbing the little falls from eddy 
to eddy far into the hills, is one of the most beautiful 
sights, to a boy who goes fishing with his old fish-pole, 
to be found on earth—above the snake line. Down 

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Above the Snake Line 


below, in the dull and slow stream, is the “sucker,”’ the 
eel, and the slow fish, which many will not eat. The 
enrichment of life that comes to one who wades up 
these mountain streams, with his fishing rod, singing 
to himself and thinking great thoughts, wading in the 
streams, taking the trout home for supper, is only 
known to those who live in those forests, who seek 
their entertainment and food above the snake line. 

There are also in that land above the snake line the 
animals we all love. There are the wisest dogs. They 
seem to be so easily taught. There the farmer’s boys 
and girls stop to pick berries while the dog goes after 
the cows. In those hills has been bred the finest qual- 
ity of canine life. The farmer says to his dog, as he 
comes from the field, “Go get the sheep!” Away he 
goes to the distant pastures and drives them in, to 
the last one. If a person falls into danger, is lost in 
the forest, or 1s hurt in a fall, the dog immediately 
notifies friends and brings relief. Many a little child 
has wandered into a stream, or into danger, and the 
watching dog has seen, and, understanding the situa- 
tion, has raced for help for the little girl in danger. 
Lives are saved over and over above the snake line, 
where these dogs live. How much the horses seem to 
know! Even the wise old New Englander often felt 
that horses had “horse sense,” and often trusted it in 
the dark when he could not trust his own. 

Above the snake line there was power. The cascade, 
in every single drop that fell, furnished power for the 
wheels of the manufacturer, and of commerce. Yes, 
these streams were once the blessing of God, supply- 
ing mankind with nearly all the manufactured articles 
used in American homes. In the hills of New England 


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the streams have formed the heart and hand of the 
manufacturing of the United States. The stream falls 
through one waterwheel and a few rods on, through 
another, and then another, from cascade to cascade, 
and one brook may run a score of mills. 

When the prodigal son lived above the snake line he 
possessed the mental power, the strength of character, 
and the influence for good he could never secure below 
that religious line. It makes us think of the period 
when Adam and Eve descended below the snake line 
and became thieves. 

Above the snake line there were glorious winter eve- 
nings. The snows came upon the hills and covered 
them with a deep blanket which protected the vege- 
tation. The land was covered for three or four months 
of the year. In the evening there was the sound of 
sleigh-bells, and the gathering of young people in some 
old farm house. The great enterprises that came from 
these winter evenings have been written in many vol- 
umes. The Yankee spent much time studying, and how 
many of the most useful inventions were thought out 
in the winter evenings “above the snake line”! 

When the springtime came, life was safe above the 
snake line, because the streams did not stop to gather 
sufficient power to throw destructive volumes of ice. 
But in the valley, every spring, the farms were cov- 
ered deep with ice, and it was late in summer before 
some of the ice melted from the damp valleys below 
the snake line. 

Above the snake line, in apple blossom time, in June, 
the mountains and farms were covered with glorious 
apple blossoms. How Mr. Moody loved them! He 
instituted an “Apple Blossom Sunday,” still observed 

[ 68 J 


Above the Snake Line 


at Northfield. He always drove through the hills in 
apple blossom time to get the inspiration of the views. 
He said he could see heaven. But down below the 
snake line was shadow, and consequently the things 
which grew were the product of shadow, and could not 
compare in prophetic beauty with those above the 
snake line. 

Many aman, when the necessities of life have taken 
him through the valley, has inquired: “Why did God 
make the mosquito?” That is like some of the theo- 
logical questions that arise now to trouble people. 
When mosquitos bite them they ask why God made 
the mosquito—and never find out! These are the 
temptations of life. Some kinds of berries growing in 
the shadow of the valley are really luscious, and boys 
and girls are tempted to go for them with long coats 
and cowhide boots to protect them. The chestnuts 
are down there, for the frosts come earlier there, but 
the people who go down after them are often bitten 
by snakes. The monuments in the cemeteries above 
the snake line show that some persons met death by 
venturing below the snake line. 

There were wild roses down there. Sometimes they 
attracted people, who said: ‘Why should we not? 
God made the roses.”” Immorality was there; vice was 
there. Life below the snake line, morally and relig- 
iously, is well illustrated by the snake line of the Berk- 
shire hills. You see the shop girl. She had a home, 
but father and mother are dead. She had a little sister 
to care for, and undertook to get the money by going 
to the store or the factory, and taking an occupation 
there. Finding that the money she received would 
not supply the necessities of her little sister and care 


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for herself properly, there came the tempter into the 
region, for she lived in a locality which was morally 
down below the snake line. There is a line in poverty 
that is below the snake line, and it is dangerous for any 
boy or girl or man or woman to take his dwelling there. 

I remember a widow who was left with five children. 
She was determined to keep them together, though she 
could not live in the style her husband had maintained. 
So down in a narrow alley, a very narrow, dirty alley, 
her children were compelled to grow up, living in the 
temptations of that awful region. Every single one of 
the five children went wrong, and one is now serving 
time for manslaughter, and the poor woman died of a 
broken heart after she went away from the prison 
doors. Her son is condemned to live a life term in 
prison. Down below the snake line—God pity the 
poor that have to live down there amid serpents and 
sin, surrounded by evil! There are tempting things 
there, wild roses, chestnuts, and dangerous lurking ser- 
pents—and I need not say more than the word “ser- 
pent” to convey the moral meaning back of this life 
below the snake line. 

There are amusements below the snake line. Every 
one brought into association with them has his mind 
tainted and his heart grows cold, and his sense of right 
and wrong is disturbed, living among the amusements 
below the snake line. 

A story comes to me, as I think of this interpretation 
of the prodigal son, of an old eagle that lived on the 
mountain top for years and years. He was recognized 
as “the old eagle of the highlands.” He was very 
strong, and his wings spread very wide, but he was 
never dangerous to man. He never interfered with 


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Above the Snake Line 


anything to disturb the families or their farms. The 
story told to me is a striking illustration. The old 
eagle saw in the dark valley some five miles below his 
home—far down the valley—a little child with a 
basket, and barefooted. They tell the story that the 
old eagle followed down and saw the little child, whose 
home was above the snake line, wandering close by a 
dark stream in the depth of the valley. The little girl 
wore a white dress, with short sleeves, and with a 
basket was going to pick berries, unconscious of the 
fact that there ever was an adder or a rattlesnake. 
She went singing gayly. The story is repeated in 
almost every home in the hills, how the eagle fol- 
lowed the little girl, circling above and watching, and 
when the snake arose and prepared to strike, down 
swept the great eagle with its awful talons, and car- 
ried the rattlesnake, writhing and wriggling, through 
the air until he came to a place where he knew if he 
released his hold the snake would be killed by its fall 
on the rocks. They found it crushed to death, one of 
the greatest snakes ever seen in that region. 

The eagle watching over the little girl who wandered 
into these dangers and temptations is like the mission- 
ary who goes into the slums among the heathen; the 
missionary that seeks to protect little children, and 
goes with strength of wings and power of talons, and 
the love of a great heart, and seizes the serpent and 
bears it away, protecting the innocent child. What a 
marvelous illustration that would be for a poem! It 
is a wonder to me that such a tribute has not come 
down in some poetical form. 

The prodigal son went back to the hills above the 
snake line. ‘He said: “I have seen enough of this! I 


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have been among these vile things long enough! I 
know now that I am wrong, that my life must be lived 
above the snake line. I must live up where I can see 
the things of God and breathe the pure air and drink 
the pure water, and live upon pure food.” “Coming to 
himself,’ he went back to his father’s home, above the 
snake line—above the moral line. The illustration of 
his return we carry beyond the story and find that he 
was at last welcomed by his brother, and that he doubt- 
less lived there in peace until his dying hour. 

You have read of the Hampshire hills in October! 
You have seen the mountains round you there in the 
glory of fall! But no person in America can say he 
has seen the full glory of an October until he has seen 
the Hampshire highlands at that season of the year. 
The automobiles go over the Mohawk trail in October 
in a continual stream, looking upon forests blooming 
like roses, and great trees like lilies, so surpassingly 
beautiful! Heart and mind cannot find words to pic- 
ture the miles and miles of glorious combinations of 
every beautiful shade and color of gleam and loveli- 
ness brought forth in thrilling glory by those trees and 
fields—in October. All this is “above the snake line.” 

When the hour of death comes; when the October of 
life appears; when our lives are weakening; when the 
time comes that the trees of life must drop their leaves; 
when the time comes for the death of the season, then 
the glory of the October day is like the death of a 
Christian who lives and dies above the snake line. Full 
of hope, full of beauty, full of glory, surrounded by 
something indescribable in holiness, the most sublime 
gift of God is the dying hour. The Christian who 
loves God, in the dying hours finds heaven gleaming 


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Above the Snake Line 


all around him. He is safely above the snake line. 
Oh, “precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of 
his saints!” 


BENEDICTION 


Now, O God, we appeal to thee for thy benediction. 
And if there be present in this house now, men or 
women, or boys or girls, who have been living below 
the snake line in character or in occupation, may they 
be lifted, in answer to our prayer, above the snake line, 
where they may maintain that Christian experience, 
that Christian character, that Christian life which will 
make their lives beautiful and useful and their death 
glorious. We ask thy benediction; and ask it in Jesus’ 
name. Amen. 


[73 ] 


ANS 


ii nw 
hh OM 


ae ue 
1° f 


| 


| ms ne ‘ om 


Estat “pits Lae re ns 
vay ni Bits ew Wie . 
soar gba 


Ne yan ee 
Pa EN sini 


Ni, 
ie a) 


iy i aH » 
, ae AG ‘ 





Harry Emerson Fospick 


It seems like a work of supererogation to write an intro- 
ductory word concerning Dr. Fosdick, who without question 
is the most widely known living preacher in Christendom. 
Even at the moment these words are written the newspapers 
report his prophetic sermon delivered at St. Peter’s Cathe- 
dral at Geneva, Switzerland, in connection with the assembly 
of the League of Nations. But he needs no sounding board 
of situation or circumstance to give carrying power to his 
words. Public interest in his utterances traces back to a 
little book on The Meaning of Prayer, which he wrote in 
1915. This little book has brought light and vitality to 
the baffled minds of millions of men and women. It has 
been followed by two others, The Meaning of Faith and 
The Meaning of Service, making a trilogy of interpretation 
of the most vital aspects of practical Christian life. It was 
while he was pastor of the Baptist Church at Montclair, 
New Jersey, that the first of these books was written, with 
the immediate result that the already considerable local 
and denominational reputation of Dr. Fosdick as a preacher 
became nationwide fame. Called from Montclair in 1915 
to be the Morris K. Jesup Professor of Practical Theology 
at Union Seminary, from which institution he was gradu- 
ated in 1904, he resigned his pastorate to devote himself 
to his professorial tasks, and to a ministry-at-large in col- 
leges, churches and religious platforms throughout the land. 
During the war he spent almost a year speaking in Britain 
and at the front under the British war office and the Ameri- 
can Y. M. C. A. In 1919 he became special preacher at 
First Presbyterian Church, New York City. Being a Bap- 
tist, and having no desire to magnify denominational dis- 
tinctions by formally changing his affiliations, he could 
not be called to the conventional relationship of pastor; yet 


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because of the church’s desire to possess his pulpit ministry 
the special relationship was created. The final relinquish- 
ment of this relationship in 1925 was the dénouement of 
an ecclesiastical drama too fresh in the public mind to 
need comment here. To great multitudes it passes compre- 
hension how the author of The Meaning of Prayer could 
conceivably be charged by any Christian as a heretic. 

The storm of heresy agitation having been stilled by his 
resignation, Dr. Fosdick was called to the pastorate of 
Park Avenue Baptist Church, New York, which call he 
accepted under two principal conditions: one, that a new 
house of worship should be built near Columbia University; 
the other, that the congregation should adopt what Dr. 
Fosdick called an “inclusive” basis of membership instead 
of the narrower basis of immersion-baptism. These condi- 
tions were accepted, and Dr. Fosdick departed for his sab- 
batical year in Palestine and the Mediterranean countries, 
to return in the fall of 1926 for his duties. He continues 
his relationship with Union Seminary. . 

Dr. Fosdick was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1878 and 
was graduated from Colgate in 1900, spending an additional 
year in the theological seminary there before going to 
Union. He has received many degrees from universities: 
M.A. from Columbia; D.D. from Brown, Yale, Colgate, and 
Glasgow; LL.D. from Michigan and Rochester; $.T.D. from 
Ohio University. 


THE OPEN DOORS 
By Dr. Harry Emerson Fospick 


“Behold I have set before thee an open door, 
and no man can shut it.”—Rev. ii), 8. 


Our thought this morning springs from a verse in the 
Book of Revelation. John was on Patmos when this 
book was conceived. Patmos is a convict island some 
ten miles long and five or six miles broad, off the coast 
of Asia Minor. There the hapless prisoners, marooned 
for many causes from high misdemeanors to Christian 
discipleship openly confessed, like John’s, spent their 
days working in the mines or marble quarries and their 
nights in the convict huts. Save for the bare mention 
of the fact, John says nothing about his imprisonment, 
but more than one phrase reveals his hidden feeling. 
When he dreams of heaven he says, ‘“‘and the sea is no 
more.” ‘To some of us that would be rather a limita- 
tion on heaven, but even we can understand how John 
felt, every day looking out on the encompassing ocean, 
the symbol of his bondage, the shining but terrible 
jailer which shut him on that convict isle. 

I am convinced that our morning’s text also repre- 
sents John’s reaction to his imprisonment. God says, 
“Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no 
man can shut it.” To be sure, John uses these words 
about one of the churches to which he is writing, but 


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they must have welled up first of all in response to his 
own experience. His imprisonment had shut doors all 
around his life. Doors of opportunity, happiness, and 
privilege had been closed, and there in his pent and 
shuttered experience he heard the voice divine that 
cried, “Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and 
no man can shut it.” _ 

What do those words mean if not this: that all the 
doors which man and circumstance could get their 
hands upon had been closed, but there still were doors, 
inner doors, that no man could shut. No circum- 
stance could reach them; no man could get his hand 
upon them. They were not in this world’s control. 
They were his doors, which opened on broad vistas 
and he could go out and come in through them and be 
in the spirit free, though he was compelled on Patmos 
to look down upon the encompassing sea. I speak to 
you this morning about this inner kingdom of the soul 
and the doors there that God has opened and that no 
man can shut. 

One naturally thinks of such a subject and feels its 
importance at a new year’s beginning. We are going out 
into a twelvemonth wherein no one of us knows what 
will happen. Here we are this morning, a great com- 
pany of people upon this wandering island in the sky 
without the faintest idea of what will befall any one 
of us before the year is done. We praise those old 
explorers who dared to sail unknown and perilous seas, 
but every day we all of us are daring adventurers. The 
voyage of this new year takes us into strange new 
places. We never have been there before. No one 
has ever been there before, and we do not know what 
will happen there. 


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The Open Doors 


In this situation it is important for us to see clearly 
that there are two sides to our lives. One side is at the 
mercy of man and circumstance; its happiness, its 
opportunities, and privileges can be shut out from us. 
And if that were the only side, then soon or late we 
all would land upon some hapless Patmos, pent in, body 
and soul, by the enclosing sea. Alas! with what tragic 
suddenness the doors do shut about some lives! But 
there is another side to us. It is a great gospel. There 
are doors in us that no man can shut. There are areas 
of our lives not at the mercy of man and circumstance. 
And all the sources of a man’s liberty, independence, 
spiritual richness, and resources lie in his uses of these 
inner doors that God opened and that no man can shut. 

The more a man knows about human life or reads 
biography, the more it is evident that here lies one 
of the chief differences between men. Set over against 
each other, for example, two powerful personalities like 
Napoleon and Paul. Outward circumstance treated 
them somewhat alike. That is to say: they both came 
from obscure beginnings little likely to issue in so 
resounding a consequence; they both rose to tremen- 
dous influence; and they both ended in prison. But 
there the similarity stops. Go to Napoleon on St. 
Helena. All the doors that man and circumstance 
could shut are closed around him. Are there any other 
doors through which he can go out and come in? None. 
It is a sad story, that last, mean, tawdry, quarrelsome, 
tinsel court of his. 

But step from that to Paul’s imprisonment. Once 
more all the doors that man and circumstance can close 
are shut about him. But as you watch him you are 
most aware of doors no man can shut. Nero had a 


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long arm, but there were gateways in Paul’s life that 
Nero could not get his fingers on. “Being rooted and 
grounded in love, strong to apprehend with all the 
saints what is the breadth and length and height and 
depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth 
knowledge,’”’—ah! Paul, you had heard that voice, too: 
“Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no 
man can shut it.” 

It is evident that this realm where our thought 
moves this morning is the special realm of religion. 
There are realms where religion overlaps other human 
interests. It overlaps industry and pleads as the will 
of God for the application of Christ’s ideals there. It 
overlaps politics and pleads as the will of God for the 
working out of Christian principles in national and 
international relations. It overlaps philosophy and in 
theology endeavors to achieve a unified and rational 
outlook on the universe. But this morning we are deal- 
ing with religion at its heart, its unshared and incom- 
municable realm where, in the inward kingdom of the 
soul, it opens doors no man can shut. On the street 
corners they will talk with you about everything else 
under heaven, but not about that. In the lecture halls 
they will speak with you of many matters of high 
import to society, but not about this. This is religion’s 
speciality. And is there anything that in the long run 
makes quite so much difference to life? I do not see 
how any one can go far on this adventurous and haz- 
ardous enterprise of the human pilgrimage, seeing how 
much of our life is at the mercy of man and circum- 
stance, without feeling year by year an increasing ery 
for inward independence and resource. 

I do not want to be the slave of circumstance. I do 


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The Open Doors 


not want to be at the mercy of man. I want inward 
resources that man and circumstance cannot touch. 
Even when ill fortune flogs me as an old tradition says 
they flogged Anaxarchus, the martyr, I would be able 
to say as he did, “Beat on at the case of Anaxarchus. 
Anaxarchus himself you cannot touch.” Even when 
unfortunate circumstance rims me round I would have 
a freedom of the soul. 


Stone walls do not a prison make, 
Nor iron bars a cage; 

Minds innocent and quiet take 
That for an hermitage. 


If I have freedom in my love 
And in my soul am free, 
Angels alone, that soar above, 

Enjoy such liberty. 


This morning, therefore, I talk with you in practical 
and homely fashion about these inward doors of the 
spirit that God has opened and no man can shut. 

For one thing, there is the door of spiritual growth. 
No matter what man or circumstance may do to you 
ontwardly, you always can use it for the development 
of a finer character inwardly. That door of spiritual 
growth stands open. You can shut it, but nobody 
else can if you really want it open. The Roman Goy- 
ernment can put John on Patmos and ring him round 
with cramping circumstance, but there is one thing 
that the whole Roman Government together cannot 
do. It cannot prevent John from being a better man 
because he is there. That John should be more patient, 
more fine-grained, more high-minded, more inwardly 
strong and courageous, the whole Roman Empire 
together cannot prevent that. 

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Do you remember from our childhood those exciting 
stories where the hero of the tale was almost caught, 
his enemies were closing in, the trap was almost sprung, 
and, lo! a secret door through which in the nick of 
time he made his thrilling exit? In later life we have 
seen that happen often, in ways just as thrilling and 
twice as true. Blindness closes in on a man’s life. He 
has been active and energetic. Now the doors shut on 
every side. Avenues of action and vistas of vision 
close. He seems caught like arat ina trap. And then 
comes that spiritual miracle before which all men with 
eyes must stand with reverence and awe. He is not 
caught like a rat in a trap. There is an open door. 
Sight dimmed but insight deepened, he becomes 
inwardly beautiful so that, whereas once he was out- 
wardly active, he becomes now radiant within, and 
men and women draw closer to him in the walk of 
life that they may be reassured about the reality of 
the spiritual life. He, too, has heard a voice: “Behold, 
I have set before thee an open door, and no man can 
shut it.” 

You see, there are many things in our lives that do 
depend upon commodious and comfortable circum- 
stance. But there is one thing that does not primarily 
depend upon fortunate environment, and that is devel- 
opment of character. If you once get a fair start with 
that you can make it grow in all environments. If the 
south winds blow you can let them warm your roots. 
If the northeast gales land on you you can let them 
toughen your fiber. Hardship can pass over you and 
leave you a better man. Bereavement can come upon 
you and leave you a gentler and more sympathetic 
spirit. Enemies can rise against you until all your 


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The Open Doors 


friends are sorry for you, when all the time you are 
growing a more gracious soul, freer from the folly of 
bitterness and fuller of the wisdom of magnanimity. 
The door of spiritual growth stands always open. 

Whether we take advantage of it or not depends alto- 
gether on what our major objective is: whether we 
are making a living or making a life. If we are pri- 
marily making a living, then God pity us! for all those 
doors, soon or late, can shut. But if we are making a 
life, if we are growing a soul, if we are seeing that the 
most sacred entrustment God ever gave us was our 
personalities to be made as fine, deep, dependable, and 
courageous as they can be made, then we have an open 
door no man can shut,—treasures in heaven, where 
neither moth nor rust doth consume, and where thieves 
do not break through nor steal. . 

There is another open door, the door of high thought. 
No matter what man and circumstance do to you out- 
wardly, they cannot prevent you from inwardly living 
in the companionship of high thoughts. That door is 
open. You can shut it, but nobody else can if you 
really want it open. You have only to read the Book 
of Revelation to see that. The Roman Empire could 
put narrow limitations around John’s body, but it could 
not put narrow limitations around John’s mind. 
Marooned on Patmos, he saw a new heaven and a new 
earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. He lived in a 
high world of great thought. 

Well, that is the world we all live in—the world of 
the thoughts we think. Walk up and down Fifth Ave- 
nue, look at the faces, and see. You say they live in 
New York. How little difference that makes! Look 
at the faces and see the worlds they live in, as diverse 


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as the thoughts they think. For there are disillusioned 
faces and flippant faces and anxious faces and cynical 
faces and vicious faces and strong, calm faces over 
which the dove of peace has brooded. And as one sees 
the faces he longs for a voice that could make them 
all hear: O, you people, what are you doing to your 
lives by your thoughts? 

A young man came*into the minister’s confessional 
to all outward appearance in comfortable circumstance. 
Really he was living in hell. He built that hell. For 
long years with his thoughts he had been at work upon 
it and now he had moved in, and with everything to 
live for he did not want to live at all. As I listened 
to him I thought of another man who was in prison, 
but what a world he lived in! “Whatsoever things are 
true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever 
things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever 
things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; 
if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think 
on these things.” 

Ah! Keep that door open in your lives. Make fre- 
quent journeyings through it into the world of great 
thoughts. Let the books of the master spirits nourish 
your meditations. Learn what Sir Edward Dyer meant 
when he said, ““My mind to me a kingdom is.” Go 
deeper; learn what Jesus meant when he said, “The 
kingdom of God is within you.” For all around your 
lives today are open doors that will not always be 
open. You have your happy entrances and exits 
through them now, yet they will close. As you grow 
older you will inevitably grow accustomed to the sound 
of those doors closing shut. Happy then the man who 
knows how to step through a secret and familiar door 


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within, and, lo! he stands in a great world of high 
thought. 

There is another open door, the door of goodwill. 
Whatever man or circumstance may do to you, noth- 
ing can prevent you from living in undisturbed good- 
will. You can shut that door, but nobody else can if 
you really want it open. 

Do you recall that verse in the Sermon on the 
Mount which in our ordinary versions is translated, “if 
therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be 
full of ight”? What does that mean? Who on earth 
can tell what it means with such a translation? 
Through that perversely literal rendering that verse 
has been largely lost to English-speaking Christianity, 
yet it is one of the truest things the Master ever said. 
Dr. Moffatt has given us the plain English for it: “if 
thine eye be generous, thy whole body shall be full of 
light.” That is to say, if you will look upon this world 
with generous eyes, your inward life will be illumined. 

So the Master lived. An unnoticed woman, with 
shamefaced modesty, puts her slender mite into the 
treasury, and appreciatively he looks upon her with 
generous eyes. Peter, fighting an unruly temperament, 
makes blundering endeavors at discipleship, and 
encouragingly he looks on him with generous eyes. 
Little children are held back from him by officious 
followers, and affectionately he looks on them with 
generous eyes. A prodigal returns stained by the sin 
and bowed by the shame of the far country, and for- 
givingly he looks on him with generous eyes. And at 
last his enemies crown him with thorns and hang him 
on the cross, and, praying for their pardon, magnani- 
mously he looks on them with generous eyes. All 

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through his ministry they were trying to shut doors 
around his life, but there were some doors they never 
could get their hands upon. Nothing can keep any man 
from looking on this world with generous eyes if he 
wants to do it. And if he does do it, nothing can 
prevent the consequence; his whole body will be full 
of light. 

Is there anything we need much more to learn in 
these embittered days? This is a very bitter world 
but, thank God! I do not have to live in a bitter world. 
This is a world full of hate and vindictiveness and 
vituperation and envy and jealousy, but, thank God! 
I do not have to live in that world. There is an inner 
door—no man can shut it—through which I step into 
the world of magnanimity and friendship and goodwill, 
from which I look out upon mankind with generous 
eyes. That is the Christian’s inward triumph, his vic- 
tory over the world. No man but himself can keep 
him from that inward kingdom of good will that is 


Hushed by every thought that springs 
From out the bitterness of things. 


There is even another open door, the door of large 
interests. For whatever man or circumstance may do 
to you, they cannot prevent you from living in a 
world of large interests and great causes. To be sure, 
man and circumstance can keep you from active serv- 
ice for some of the causes that you are interested in. 
They did that with John. They cooped him up on 
Patmos. Was not the poignant sting of his captivity 
this, that he beat his arduous wings against the bars 
of his limitations, longing to be back again in his active 
service for the Christ? Yet, even so, marooned on 

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Patmos, they could not make him live in a small world. 
Read the book and see. All the most important move- 
ments of his time swept through his mind. Thank 
God for that. 

You do not know and I do not know what crippling 
of health, what cramping of circumstance may come 
to us this year, but so long as we live at all and have 
any minds: we can live in a great world of large inter- 
ests. If you doubt it, look at Miss Helen Keller. If 
ever there was a life around which all the doors seemed 
shut, it was the life of that extraordinary woman. But 
see her now as one by one those inner doors have 
opened so that, marooned upon a narrow Patmos 
though she is, she lives in a great world. Those of you 
who know her know that all the major interests and 
greater causes of this exciting generation throng 
through her mind. She lives in a far larger world than 
most of the men and women who walk up and down 
Broadway. For a man’s life is as large as his interests 
and no larger. 

What exciting things there are to be interested in 
now. Education—we call this a civilized earth, but 
out of every three people on the planet two people 
cannot read or write. Think of the work that is yet 
to be done for the cause of making Christendom Chris- 
tian. We must do it. Christendom is the greatest 
handicap Christ faces. What scathing condemnation 
in that remark an Indian made to Dr. Robert E. Speer: 
“Jesus Christ is hopelessly handicapped by his associa- 
tion with the West”! Or consider the crusade against 
war. The reactionaries of America have thought that 
they ultimately would step on and quite crush Amer- 
ica’s better purposes to have a worthy share in build- 


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ing international substitutes for war. Well, we shall 
see. This crusade against war is barely under way. 
Once more, in our generation, 


“He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never 
call retreat.” 


Thank God, man or circumstance to the contrary not- 
withstanding, no one of us needs live in a small world! 
Last of all, there is the open door to faith in God and 
fellowship with him. No matter what man or circum- 
stance may do to you, that door stands open. You 
can shut it, but nobody else can if you really want 
it open. That is the heart of religion—that inner door 
through which one steps to stand, it may be quietly, in 
the presence of the Unseen Friend. A woman once 
said to me that prayer had utterly left her life, but, 
suspecting that I knew her better than she knew her- 
self, I said, “Do you mean to tell me that you are not 
conscious of a Presence in fellowship with whom you 
find your peace and power?” ‘Why,” she said, “I 
couldn’t live without that.’ But that is prayer. 
Behind all more formal and stated methods of devo- 
tion that is prayer at its very center. As Jeremy Tay- 
lor, the old preacher, said, prayer involves frequent 
colloquies and short discoursings between God and 
one’s own soul. 
Lord, what a change within us one short hour 
Spent in Thy presence will avail to make! 
What heavy burdens from our bosoms take; 
What parched grounds refresh, as with a shower! 
We kneel, and all around us seems to lower; 
We rise, and all the distant and the near 
Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and clear! 
We kneel, how weak; we rise, how full of power! 
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The Open Doors 


Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, 
Or others, that we are not always strong; 
That we are ever overborne with care; 

That we should ever weak or heartless be, 
Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, 

And joy and strength and courage are with Thee? 


Is that door open in your life? Isit wide open? No 
unforgiven sin that bars your way? No secret evil half 
hated and yet clung to, that trips you up when you 
would pass that threshold? No vindictiveness, no 
quarrelsome relationship with a brother man that pre- 
vents you from looking into the eyes of God? Is that 
door wide open? Then you know what the Psalmist 
meant: 


“Jehovah is on my side; I will not fear; 
What can man do unto me?” 


Here, then, are five open doors no man can shut: 
spiritual growth, high thoughts, goodwill, large inter- 
ests, fellowship with God. Is it not clear what the 
saints at their best have meant when they have defied 
the world? O world, take from me this next year what 
you will; these things are mine and no man can touch 
them. And when at last death seems to close the final 
door, even more manifest is the Christian’s triumph. 
Charles Kingsley often expressed his longing for that 
moment, saying, ‘God forgive me if I am wrong, but I 
look forward to it with an intense and reverent curi- , 
osity.” Just so! For even then he heard the word 
that John heard long ago on Patmos: “Behold, I have 
set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it.” 


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ar x: he 





CHARLES WHITNEY GILKEY 


Dr. Gilkey’s ministry began in the Y. M. C. A. He was 
student secretary under the International Committee for 
three years after graduating from Harvard with his A.B. 
degree in 1903 and his A.M. degree in 1904. Resigning 
this work, he entered Union Theological Seminary, where 
he took his B.D. degree in 1908, and went abroad for fur- 
ther study at the universities of Berlin and Marburg, and 
at Scottish Universities and Oxford. The Hyde Park Baptist 
Church called him to its pulpit in 1910. The ministry thus 
begun has continued until the present time and waxes in 
popularity and power. 

Naturally Dr. Gilkey’s early bent toward work among 
students fits him in a special fashion for his great parish 
at the center of which is The University of Chicago. The 
student mind in all the great universities of the country 
comes into contact with his peculiarly modern spirit by the 
annual visits which he makes to Yale, Harvard, Princeton, 
Cornell, Toronto, Wellesley, and the rest. Born in Water- 
town, Massachusetts, in 1882, Dr. Gilkey belongs to the 
present generation of youth, and having spent his entire 
professional career in environments in which the presence 
of students was the dominant fact, he is peculiarly fitted to 
interpret their aspirations and to impart, in terms congenial 
to their minds, the everlasting truth of the gospel. 

He spent the year 1924 and part of 1925 in the Orient, 
whither he had gone to deliver the Barrows lectures. This 
Foundation was established in 1894, following the World’s 
Parliament of Religions, in order “to interpret Christianity 
in a friendly, temperate, and conciliatory way, to the schol- 
arly and thoughtful people of India.” The appointment 
gave Dr. Gilkey the opportunity to set forth his conception 


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of the Personality of Jesus at a moment when the Indian 
mind was taking keen interest in the figure of Christ as 
distinguished from the Western churches and civilization 
that wear His name. The entire course of six lectures was 
delivered in six leading student centers: Bombay, Lucknow, 
Lahore, Calcutta, Rangoon, and Madras. A total audience 
of 40,000 persons heard him, of whom at least 25,000 were 
university students, at least seventy-five per cent of the 
total being non-Christian. These lectures are now being 
published in India and in this country in book form, under 
the title, Jesus and Our Generation. Dr. Gilkey received 
the degree of D.D. from Hillsdale College and Williams 
College, both in 1925. Now at the zenith of his powers, 
and deeply loved by his entire parish, his contribution to 
the spiritual welfare of our time is destined to be conspicu- 
ous and abundant. 


[ 92 | 


JOURNEYS OUT AND HOME 


(An Easter Sermon) 
By CHarites W. GILKEY 


“The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy 
coming in, from this time forth and even forever- 
more.”—Psalm exxi, 8. 


This promise was given to travelers long ago and far 
away, as they fared forth by swift camel or slow mule 
for journeys across the desert. On Easter morning our 
Christian faith claims it no less for all worthy voyagers 
across the sea of human life. “The Lord shall preserve 
thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth 
and even forevermore.” Two great faiths lie plain upon 
its surface and deep at its heart. The living God in 
whom human life finds its ultimate meaning, its daily 
and hourly renewal, and its eternal home, is the God 
of all our worthy outgoings: but he is no less the God 
of all our true home-comings. He goes forth with us 
on every morning of high adventure; our guide, our 
guard, our great companion—if we will have it so. 
“The Lord shall preserve thy going out.” But when at 
the end of the long day we turn again homeward, laden 
with our trophies, our burdens, our hurts, our hunger- 
ings, our homesickness, our loves, he is waiting for us 
there, the eternal Home of the human spirit. “The 
Lord shall preserve thy coming in.” And our religion, 


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our Christianity, our faith in God, our view of life, 
if we prefer that phrase—are none of them big 
enough for the needs of men, for the heights and 
depths of human experience, for the riches of the gos- 
pel of Jesus Christ, unless they gather up both sides of 
this great text, and hold them together; not so much 
perhaps in a logical theory of the universe, as in a 
faith and hope and love in which men ean live and die 
triumphant. 


I 
“The Lord shall preserve thy going out.” 


If we must believe that the Living God is “cabined, 
cribbed, confined” within the black type and orthodox 
phrases of an ancient creed, or between the covers of 
a Hebrew history of long ago, or among the black 
tents of Abraham and Moses or the white dwelling 
houses of Peter and Paul, then it may be a bit hard 
for us really to believe this adventurous assurance that 
“the Lord shall preserve thy going out.” But the 
pioneers and the prophets, the explorers and the heroes 
of faith, the young men who see visions and the old 
men who still dream dreams, the great saints and the 
creat souls, to whom God’s journeying mercies “are 
new every morning,” have always been sure of it. 
They have found in their own experience that he is the 
God of every great adventure, whose spirit striving 
within our sluggish souls is ever urging us out and on 
and up into new and undiscovered regions. They 
know that whenever he thus leads us forth, he himself 
goes with us all the way. No place and no journey is 
strange to him, or need be lonely for us if we keep com- 
pany with him. His guidance is available for every 


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Journeys Out and Home 


crossroad’s perplexity; his radiant presence can trans- 
form and quicken even the dullest days of plodding 
routine; and to walk with him and learn to know him 
aright, is what chiefly makes life worth living, both 
here and hereafter. 

There are some memorable lines in Kipling’s “The 
Explorer,’ which have always appealed particularly to 
us younger men because they state in such unconven- 
tional yet convincing phrase this same faith of the 
text in the God who inspires and accompanies all high 
adventure: 

“There’s no sense in going further—it’s the edge of cultiva- 
tion,” 

So they said, and I believed it—broke my land and sowed 

my cfop— 
Built my barns and strung my fences in the little border 
station, 

Tucked away below the foothills where the trails run 

out and stop. 


Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes 
On one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated—so: 
“Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind 
the Ranges— 
“Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for 
VOU. Go.” 


Then I knew, the while I doubted—knew His Hand was 
certain o’er me. 
Still-—it might be self-delusion—scores of better men had 


died— 
I could reach the township living, but . . . He knows what 
terrors toreme... 
But I didn’t . . . but I didn’t. I went down the other 
side. 


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Have I named one single river? Have I claimed one single 


acre? 
Have I kept one single nugget—(barring samples)? No, 
not I! 
Because my price was paid me ten times over by my Maker. 
But you wouldn’t understand it... . You go up and 
occupy. 


Yes, your “‘Never-never. country”—yes, your “edge of cul- 
tivation,” 
And “no sense in going further’—till I crossed the range 


to see. 
God forgive me! No, I didn’t. It’s God’s present to our 
nation. 
Anybody might have found it but—His Whisper came 
to me! 


But even those of us to whom these stirring lines 
appeal most, discover presently that this same faith 
was stated long centuries ago, in far finer poetry and 
with an infinitely larger setting and horizon, by the 
Psalmist: 


“Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? 
Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? 
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: 
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there. 
If I take the wings of the morning, 
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; 
Even there shall thy hand lead me, 
And thy right hand shall hold me.” 


Surely this must mean that the living God stands 
ready to be our guide on all high intellectual adven- 
ture, when our exploring minds, urged by our deep 
instincts and our pressing needs, go forth to new dis- 
coveries of the world about us, better understanding of 

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Journeys Out and Home 


the life that is given us, broader conceptions of the God 
we “ignorantly worship,” worthier hopes of the immor- 
tality our hearts desire. Some of us have faith to 
believe that when our theology is considerably less pro- 
vincial than much of it is now, and our science per- 
haps just a little less provincial than some of it is now; 
when our thinking minds and our aspiring souls under- 
stand each other better and help each other more; we 
shall then at least recover the fullness of what is after 
all an ancient Christian faith, that God is the God of 
all truth. Huis guiding presence within the mind of 
man lights us along the narrow and difficult way that 
leads into larger truth. If some of us have been busy 
throwing overboard our childish conceptions of relig- 
ion because they have seemed too small for so great 
a voyage as we are now finding human life to be, we 
shall do well not to miss the point of Emerson’s 
assurance: 
When the half-gods go, 
The gods arrive. 


And it is equally true that the living God is the God 
of all high social adventure, who opens men’s eyes to 
the uglinesses and the wrongs that are round about 
them in the accepted order of things as they are, and 
thrusts them forth, in the face it may be of ridicule 
and sometimes even of repudiation, to seek what the 
epistle to the Hebrews calls “a better country.” So 
also is he the God of all high moral adventure, who 
opens men’s eyes to the unworthiness of the low and 
pestilential levels on which they have been living, and 
urges them to overcome the inertia of their reluctant 
flesh and climb to the uplands of the spirit. For wher- 
ever, in Paul’s great word, men forget the things which 


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-are behind, reach forward to the things that are before, 
and press on toward the goal unto the prize of the 
upward calling, it is God who has thus called them— 
and he will preserve their going out. 

Sometimes it almost seems to some of us younger 
men that our fundamentalist brethren have forgot- 
ten the first part of this text. They appear to have 
difficulty in believing that God really calls men to 
the discovery of anything new; and that he has offered 
to go with them when they start out to find it. If God 
is really the God of all truth, surely we need not fear 
the search for larger truth, provided only we seek it 
under his good guidance. It was Jesus himself who 
promised that his followers would themselves be 
guided, step by step, into all the truth—not by the 
letter that killeth, but by the indwelling spirit that 
giveth life. And it was Jesus who declared that every 
teacher who really understands the kingdom of God, 
will be able to bring forth out of his spiritual eee 
ures things new as well as things old. 

And yet, at the same time, our more conservative 
brethren are quite right in thither adventure out of 
the old and into the new country is always a difficult 
and sometimes a dangerous expedition. Men who 
undertake it need not only to be guided and guarded, 
but, as the text suggests, to be “preserved”: preserved 
from the rashness and conceit of undue overconfidence, 
from the quick dogmatism of first impressions, from 
the easy distortion that comes from false perspectives, 
from the pride that goeth before destruction, from the 
way that seemeth right unto a man, the ends whereof 
are the ways of death. It is that very guidance and 
preservation which a living faith in God promises to 

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Journeys Out and Home 


all high adventure. “The Lord shall preserve thy 
going out . . . from this time forth and even 
forevermore.” 


II 
“The Lord shall preserve . . . thy coming in.” 


There is deep insight as well as lilting melody in the 
little song, “The House and the Road,” which Jose- 
phine Preston Peabody has inscribed on the first of 
her Singing Leaves: 


The little Road says Go; 
The little House says Stay. 
And O, it’s bonny here at home, 
But I must go away. 


The little Road, like me, 
Would seek and turn and know; 
And forth I must, to learn the things 
The little Road would show! 


And go I must, my dears, 
And journey while I may, 

Though heart be sore for the little House, 
That had no word but Stay. 


Maybe, no other way 
Your child could ever know 

Why a little House would have you stay, 
When a little Road says Go. 


There is equal wisdom in that shrewd remark of 
Kenneth Grahame in his delightful animal story, “The 
Wind in the Willows,” that both animals and men are 
by temperament either adventurers or stay-at-homes. 
The only truer thing he could possibly have said, would 


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have been that many of us are sometimes adventurers, 
and then again stay-at-homes. Our own family has 
been evenly divided and widely separated these last 
eight months: we two parents in India on what we 
have often called “our great adventure’; while our 
two little folks have stayed at home in Chicago. But 
on Christmas Day in Delhi, 10,000 miles away from 
them, we cared a great deal more about being stay-at- 
homes than adventurers any longer, for the holidays 
at least; and for some little time after our return, we 
haven’t felt like ever adventuring forth again any- 
where. Miss Peabody’s song is just right when it sug- 
gests that out on the journeys of the road, we learn to 
appreciate the house we call home; that neither the 
adventures of the road alone, nor yet the affections 
of the home alone, are all of human life; and that 
human experience is never complete until it includes 
and does justice to both. It must preserve our going 
out and our coming in. 

This is not only good poetry: it is better religion. 
Very close to the center of any truly religious view 
of human life, and to the beating heart of any truly 
Christian confession of faith les the assurance that 
in God is the only ultimate and adequate satis- 
faction and fulfillment for our deepest desires and 
worthiest aspirations. ‘Thou hast made us for thy- 
self, and our hearts are restless until they find their 
rest in thee.” Religion puts its trust here and here- 
after in the living God, who is in some simple yet 
profound sense the final unity and security for both 
these normal and natural aspects of human experience. 
He is not only our companion in all worthy adven- 
tures of the opening day and the climbing road. He is 

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Journeys Out and Home 


our dwelling-place in all generations, and our eternal 
home. To him we may return and come home like 
tired toilers at the end of the long day; like the prod- 
igal turning hungrily to his father’s house and his 
father’s heart; like little children running from their 
troubles, and even from their toys, to their mother’s 
arms. All that gives its deep human appeal to a song 
like “My Little Grey Home in the West”; all that 
trembles in men’s voices and aches in their hearts in 
a strange land, until they dare not trust themselves to 
sing “Home, Sweet Home’’:—all that is and shall be 
fulfilled, at long last, in men’s experience with God. 
“The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy com- 
ing in.” 

We were recognizing just now that many deeply 
religious men, conservative in their thinking, find it 
hard to “keep the faith” in God as our companion and 
guide on all high adventures of social reconstruction 
and intellectual exploration. Is it not equally true 
that many of our modern social workers and scientific 
thinkers, radical in their thinking, find it very hard to 
“keep the faith” in God as the eternal Home of the 
immortal human spirit They are afraid there that the 
wish is father to the thought—and still more to the 
faith; that our hungry human hearts are here “putting 
it over” on our more impartial minds, and making us 
believe what our hearts want to. Let us frankly recog- 
nize the very real danger that religion may lapse into 
sentimentality—just as love often enough does. But 
no sane man would refuse to love parent or friend or 
wife or child, just because many people are sickishly 
sentimental about so doing. And there is very real 
danger in these modern days, not only that religion 

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should be too sentimental in its thought and its pic- 
tures of the other world, but also that many men who 
pride themselves upon being modern-minded should 
lean so far backwards to avoid sentimentality that they 
may narrow their vision and impoverish their experi- 
ence thereby. 

These matters all come down finally to the question 
how far we dare trust our deepest instincts and our 
highest capacities. The reflective scientist knows well 
enough that he cannot prove the validity of those 
assumptions on which all his science rests; namely, 
that our human faculties and senses give us a true 
report of the outside world—that there is any outside 
world for that matter—or that there is anything at all 
except his own solitary consciousness. What he does 
know is that when he goes confidently out on the 
course of conduct to which these assumptions natur- 
ally lead, he finds not only that his own life is enlarged 
and enriched, and his power to deal with “nature” is 
steadily increased, but that he can share these results 
most valuably with his fellows. Just so, the thought- 
ful Christian knows well enough that he cannot prove 
either God or immortality: but that when he starts 
out to practice the presence of God, and the kind of 
life that alone deserves immortality, he finds within 
himself a deepening life, and a growing power to meet 
and overcome the hardest tests of life and death alike, 
which he can share inexhaustibly with his fellows. 
These are not only 


“The truths that never can be proved”— 


this is “the way and the truth and the life” that can 
only be lived—as Jesus himself has given it to us, not 
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Journeys Out and Home 


in an argument or even in a creed, but in a life that 
we may catch from him and share with others. 

I wonder increasingly whether we have not been bas- 
ing our faith in immortality much too narrowly and 
individualistically on our own expectation of “glory 
for me” in “Beulahland.” There have been some of 
the greatest and saintliest souls of our generation who 
have not cared overmuch what happens to them 
beyond this present, if only the Beloved Community 
goes forward: and there have not been lacking learned 
men to argue that one who has learned from Jesus to 
be willing to lose his life for others’ sakes, will hardly 
set too much store by his own personal future. But is 
not a main support for our immortal faith, not so much 
my little claim on behalf of my insignificant self, as 
the claim of my undying love on behalf of those who 
have called it forth so irrevocably that there can be 
no real home for either them or me, here or hereafter, 
unless we share it together? My loved ones may be 
too humble or unselfish to demand immortality for 
themselves; but I who honor and love them, believe in 
it on their behalf far more confidently than on my 
own. Our love cannot let them go. Surely the in- 
finite Love that quickened ours, will not let them go. 

We had just borne from the church the worn-out 
body, paralyzed and speechless for years before death 
brought release, of one of the noblest Christian women 
whom some of us have ever known. As the funeral 
procession started for the open grave, her heartbroken 
husband, who had found his daily joy and privilege in 
caring for her dumb helplessness, put his hand on my 
knee and said in a tone that I shall never forget: “God 
must not let anything happen to her.” That was not 

[ 103 ] 


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the voice of selfishness claiming immortality for its 
little self: it was the voice of devoted love and loyalty 
claiming eternal worth before the God of all love, for 
her whom God had given him to love and to cherish, in 
sickness even more than in health. Devotion like that 
is surely a capacity not less high and not less deserving 
of continuing fulfillment, than our power to think 
straight or to observe carefully. And may we not then 
trust the assurances of our loving hearts, at least as 
far as we trust the assumptions of our inquiring minds 
and adventurous spirits? 

These assurances confirm themselves by the same 
kind of practical results in the enrichment and re- 
inforcement of life. The maiden whose heart has 
gone out irrevocably to her lover, cannot prove to her 
own friends, much less to his critics, that he is all that 
her love believes him to be, or that life with him will 
surely bring the bliss which she expects: but that faith 
and love of hers are nevertheless the only door into 
the richest experience that human life holds. And 
when the experience of motherhood lies before her, 
she cannot prove that her child will be worth the cost 
to her in blood and tears and toil: but that same gaunt- 
let of anguish and anxiety is her only road to all the 
joys and rewards of motherhood. Religious faith can- 
not prove that there is a Father’s house at the long 
journey’s end, where we shall be with him and with 
those we love, at home forevermore. But those who 
face life’s hardest gauntlets and its darkest mysteries 
in that faith, find in it here and now a peace that pass- 
eth understanding, a hope that is as an anchor to the 
soul, and a love that never faileth. By such living 
faith God surely preserves our “going out” into the 

[ 104 ] 


Journeys Out and Home 


life that now is: shall he any the less preserve our 
“coming in” to the life which is to come? 

The world knows Ramsay Macdonald as the first 
labor prime minister of Great Britain; but his neigh- 
bors and friends know him also and much more inti- 
mately as the author of a memoir to his wife which has 
reminded some of us—and there could hardly be higher 
praise—of Professor George H. Palmer’s Life of Alice 
Freeman Palmer. One incident in that memoir is 
worth more than any sermon can ever be, as evidence 
that however much forms of thought may have 
changed for modern folk as progressive in their think- 
ing as was Mrs. Macdonald, the faith with which great 
souls like her meet life and death is still as of old the 
faith in which our fathers lived and died. 


Her faith stood the test to the end. When she 
knew that she was close by the opening gateway 
of death, I asked her if she desired to see any one 
who would speak to her of what was to come. 
“That would be a waste of time,” she replied. “I 
have always been ready. Let us praise God 
together for what has been. He has been very 
good to me in giving me my work, my friends, 
and my faith. At the end of the day I go gladly 
to him for rest and shelter.” She was convinced 
that life and time were not the sum and substance 
of experience, and went away as though but start- 
ing on a journey which, beginning in darkness, 
would proceed through light. She would hold my 
hand, she said, till those who had gone before gave 
her greetings. 


[105 ] 





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GEORGE ANGIER GORDON 


Forty-one years in one pulpit! And that a pulpit than 
which there is none in all America more exacting in its 
requirements of the man who occupies it. Here, surely, 
is a record and an achievement great with honor and bless- 
ing both to the preacher and his people. If we think of it 
only from the professional side, what drafts upon his in- 
tellectual resources a preacher had to be able to honor in 
the steady rhythm of recurring Sundays throughout more 
than forty years in so extraordinary a parish. With a con- 
gregation containing the elite scholarship of the land, with 
hundreds of inquiring and critical and perplexed students 
in the pews, no homiletical time-serving was possible. New 
furrows had continually to be plowed; new fields invaded; 
new frontiers established, the while the ancient and ever- 
lasting truth of the gospel was being uttered in ever fresh 
sermonic forms. As a revelation of the capacity of the 
human mind, the ministry of Dr. Gordon, subjected as it 
has been to so unique a test, is both a rebuke and a chal- 
lenge to all his brother ministers. 

At his fortieth anniversary as pastor of Old South Con- 
eregational Church, Boston, in responding to President 
Eliot’s address of appreciation, Dr. Gordon disclosed his 
own subjective reaction to the challenging circumstances of 
his parish. Recalling the examination he was put through 
by the church council at the time of his call, he went on 
to say: 

“Since then has come the examination of these forty years 
of living and thinking and serving in the presence of high 
character in men and women, living and thinking and serv- 
ing in the presence of the high mind and lofty character of 
this extraordinary community, till I have come to think 


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of examination and judgment as the supreme privilege of 
life—to live in the presence of high, exacting standards of 
intellect, of character, and of behavior, and incessantly to 
undergo the great testing process of a moral community 
and a moral world.” 

It is not possible in this place even to begin to interpret 
the life career of Dr. Gordon who stands, as Dr. Newton 
has pointed out, “in the-dynasty of Edwards and Bushnell, 
as the third truly constructive theologian that America has 
known,” and who unites with intellectual powers of the 
ten talent order the special gifts of the preacher in equal 
degree. It must suffice to recall a few of the outstanding 
facts of his remarkable life. He was born in Scotland, in 
1853, receiving his early education in the common schools 
of Insch. Coming to the United States in 1871, he entered 
Bangor Theological Seminary, from which he was gradu- 
ated in 1877. Later he studied at Harvard, leaving behind 
him the record of an honor student at the time of taking 
his A.B. in 1881. Ordained to the Congregational ministry 
in 1877, he held two pastorates prior to his call to Boston 
—at Temple, Maine, and Greenwich, Connecticut. He was 
university preacher at Harvard 1886-1890 and 1906-1909. 
As Ingersoll lecturer and Lowell Institute lecturer at Har- 
vard, and as Lyman Beecher lecturer and Taylor lecturer 
at Yale, some of his chief contributions to religious thought 
have been made. Among his books are: The Witness to 
Immortality, The Christ of Today, Immortality and the 
New Theodicy, The New Epoch for Fath, Through Man 
to God, Religion and Miracles, Revelation and the Ideal, 
Aspects of the Infinite Mystery. And now at the end of 
the list comes his own life story in a book entitled My 
Education and Religion, which thousands will read for the 
revelation it will give of a great soul whose long pathway 
has been on the heights, but whose comradeship has ex- 
tended with inspiring simplicity to the humblest of his 
fellow wayfarers. 


[ 108 ] 


THE SENSE OF OBLIGATION 
By Grorce A. GorRDON 


“Thou oughtest.”—Matt. xxv, 27. 


Two pillars sustain the great bridge by which the 
faithful pass over the deep and stormy ravine of life. 
One pillar is the sense of privilege, the other is the 
sense of obligation. Life cannot rest exclusively either 
on the one or the other. On the hither bank of the 
river, and on the yonder bank, the bridge must rest 
upon rock. Equilibrium cannot be otherwise attained; 
and for evenness and just balance in life it must be 
founded both on the sense of privilege and the sense of 
obligation. It is essential that men shall be able to 
say, “O how love I thy law,” and “We have done that 
which it was our duty to do.” 

Perhaps the normal Christian life is a pendulum- 
swing between the two. This moment we touch the 
sense of privilege and the next we return to the sense 
of obligation. One instant we fear as we enter the 
cloud, and the next we desire to build tabernacles 
under its great shadow. In following the Master one 
swings between the awe of conscience and the rapture 
of love. His appeal comes today through the task 
set before us; tomorrow it will come through the 
delight upon which we may enter. Every man who 
enters the tomb of Napoleon is obliged to uncover; 

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soon he becomes absorbed in the high and solemn 
beauty of the mausoleum. But while he remains 
within the enchanted place, he passes from awe to 
delight and again from delight to awe. That would 
seem to be the normal mood toward human life. We 
awake in the sublime temple of humanity and we cry, 
“How dreadful is this place.’””’ We open our nature in 
reverence to the appeal of life and we sing, “This is 
none other than the house of God, and this the gate of 
heaven.” 

Perhaps these two feelings, the sense of privilege and 
the sense of obligation, are owing to one inspiration. 
Perhaps it will be found that as with the revolving 
earth up becomes down and down up, the highest 
becomes the deepest and the deepest the highest, so as 
the soul turns toward the Infinite, now with the heart 
and now with the conscience, the one divine appeal 
becomes now the sense of privilege and now the sense 
of obligation. And sometimes when both the heart and 
the conscience are struck at the same time, or when 
the heart is transfigured through the conscience, we 
feel, like Bushnell, that obligation is a privilege, and 
with him we sing, “Thy statutes have been my songs 
in the house of my pilgrimage.’ Perhaps it is the 
normal way for the sense of privilege to come through 
the sense of obligation. Look at the old-fashioned 
clock upon the wall. The force that keeps it going is 
the weight that is hung upon the chain. This is the 
poetry that lies at the heart of duty; this is the sur- 
prise and charm that come out of the burden of life. 
Nothing that keeps life in righteous movement can be 
other than privilege, and nothing can do this that is 
not weighted with the force of obligation. 

[110 ] 


The Sense of Obligation 


I 

The sense of obligation leads straight to reality. It 
is the voice of the personal conscience affirming the 
reality of the divine conscience and the human con- 
science in society. The sense of obligation, therefore, 
brings us close to the order of the universe, it touches 
reality, clears the surface of it and says, “Stand here, 
build here, live here.” It is like the sense of touch. 
The color that delights the eye may be an illusion; the 
music that charms the ear may be purely subjective; 
the flavors and perfumes that are an exquisite pleasure 
to the sense of taste and the sense of smell may have 
no meaning beyond the sensitive organism. Four of 
the five senses may revel in their happiest life, and yet 
existence may be a dream. Color, sound, flavor, and 
perfume lead nowhere necessarily; they are affections 
in the sensitive mind, but are they anything beyond? 
To the blind there is no color, to the deaf there is no 
sound, to the callous palate there is no flavor, and when 
the sense of smell is absent there is no perfume in the 
rose. Without these four senses these four worlds 
would not be. 

Where then is reality? It is given in the sense of 
touch. It is given through contact with the resisting 
mass and force of the world. We come to know the 
reality of the outward world because it blocks our way. 
Here is the river that you cannot ford, here is the sea 
that you cannot swim, here is the mountain that stands 
in your way, here is the rock that resists your digging. 
We find the reality of the outward world as the stream 
might be imagined to find it. It is sent out in one 
direction by the watershed; it is curved and bent, a 
hundred times blocked and commanded, checked in this 

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path and driven in that, by the conformation of the 
earth. The ups and downs, the tumultuous miles and 
the slow-moving, the rapid changes of course among 
the hills and the endless windings in the plain, are the 
experiences through which the river might be sup- 
posed to come to the sense of the reality of the earth. 
And in the same way the world that determines and 
deflects our course, that blocks it and turns it, that 
compels us to walk and build, cross the land and the 
sea, in conformation to an order that is fixed, reveals 
its truth through this vexed and often baffled experi- 
ence. The man who runs up against the rock is thereby 
brought to confess that the world is real. 

Now conscience is this sense of touch for the reality 
of God and of the souls of men. Pleasure and pain, 
joy and sorrow, spiritual need and spiritual satisfaction 
may sometimes fail in the convincingness of their tes- 
timony to the eternal world. But the sense that one 
owes something implies that one owes it to reality. 
We owe something to the Infinite; the sense of obliga- 
tion depends upon the reality of the Infinite, and if we 
say there is no God, and the feeling of obligation to 
him is therefore an illusion, what follows? We bang 
ourselves against the moral order of the world, as a man 
who had willfully put out his eyes might bang him- 
self against the rock. God is there in the moral order 
of the world, and the march against that order is futile 
and leaves life broken and bleeding. So with the dis- 
regard of social obligation. The social order stands, 
and the man who tries to get at the sweetness of life 
in disregard of his social obligations finds that he steps 
upon a spring that throws him into the embrace of 
pikes and spears. 

[112 ] 


The Sense of Obligation 


That horrid inquisitional device whereby the victim 
in attempting to kiss the iron image of woman was 
girt and pierced with lances and held in the grasp of 
death, is the awful symbol by which the moral order 
reveals its reality to the bad man. He says there is no 
God, no righteous order, no way which he is bound to 
take in dealing with his fellow-men. But God and the 
righteous order and the path determined for him as a 
moral being are nevertheless there; and the day that 
he sets out in search of his own good in contempt of the 
good of others, that day he puts his foot upon the plat- 
form and touches the spring that will ultimately bring 
round him the terrible arms of Truth that will lock him 
in an embrace of agony that will reveal to him, through 
torture, the awful reality which he has denied. The 
way of the transgressor is hard. It is more; it is finally 
impossible. And conscience is the hand by which we 
feel after God and find him, the hand by which we 
grasp the hand of man and know that it is our broth- 
er’s. Behind the sense of touch is the mass and force 
of the real world; back of the sense of obligation is 
the truth of God, the souls of men, and the moral 
order. 


LE 


The sense of obligation breeds reverence. If this 
feeling is less evident among us than was once the 
case, it may be for two reasons. Reverence may have 
been wrongly or excessively given, and its withdrawal 
from an undeserving object or its moderation may 
seem like the decay of the great sentiment. When 
Oliver Cromwell defied Charles I, when he brought the 
mendacious king to the block, and when he was sup- 

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ported in that act by those who had suffered and shed 
blood for the freedom of England, it was thought that 
there was a great decay of reverence. When the Amer- 
ican colonies defied George III, it was again asserted 
that the Americans were greatly wanting in reverence. 
If there is a loss of this high feeling among us, it may 
be because it has hitherto been blindly or excessively 
given. 

A whole world of thought is here opened upon the 
character of belief, upon the nature of the ideals that 
are presented to the young, upon the type of manhood 
and womanhood in parents and in the older generation. 
See to it that the God you offer shall compel reverence; 
see to it that the infinite love is set before the mind 
that has been wronged; see to 1t that the God and 
Father of Jesus Christ is offered to homage and trust. 
To what grim and dreadful idol have we often lent the 
holiest name; and how often our own hearts, warm 
and human, have put to shame the God of our worship. 
See to it that the ideal is that of the man according 
to the measure of the stature of Christ. See to it that 
in parenthood and in the older generation there shall 
be high seriousness, public spirit, sincerity, tenderness, 
and strength. The students of Cambridge could not 
but reverence Frederick Denison Maurice; the students 
of Harvard could not but revere Andrew Preston 
Peabodv. 

If the decay of reverence 1s through the loss or weak- 
ening of the sense of obligation, we see at once how it 
is to be recovered. Show what life has cost. Show 
the cost of life in parenthood, in the incessant service 
by which the world is kept alive, in the arts and 
sciences and institutions that have arisen as ministers 

[114 ] 


The Sense of Obligation 


to it, in the national sacrifice by which national free- 
dom and opportunity have been won, in the imme- 
morial sorrow through which civilization has come to 
its present richness and power. Bid the young look at 
Christ giving himself under the whole sovereignty of 
his conscience for human life. Tell them to reflect 
upon Christ’s estimate of human existence as shown in 
Christ’s sense of obligation, and in his conscientious 
death for man. Ask them further to behold with 
Christ the sufferings of the world. Note with him its 
toil, weariness, hardship, and heroism; regard with 
him its love and its sorrow, its range and pathos and 
mystery; listen with him to the voices of its lamenta- 
tion and the surge of its tidal and momentous hope. 
Place the young within sight of the cost of life, and 
it will command the sense of obligation. No one 
could see God and live; so ran the old saying. No 
man can see life and not feel in duty bound to serve 
it. And with the sense that we owe something to life, 
that we owe something deep and high to it, that we 
owe our best powers to it in their best consecration, 
life itself will emerge into august greatness. We shall 
fear to sin against man or woman because human life 
is so sacred. We shall see life in something of the 
inviolateness with which it stood in the vision of Christ. 
It will be the bush upon the hillside burning with 
God; and we shall bow before it in a great homage 
and listen to it in a vast hope. 


III 
The sense of obligation opens into a ceaseless inspi- 
ration. The fact that one feels that one is in duty 
bound puts the availing power in his will. The hope 
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of eminence is an honorable motive; it operates upon 
the student, upon the professional man, upon the 
soldier, and upon men in general. The desire for 
knowledge or wealth, or power, or happiness, or appro- 
bation is a great motive in life. But no one of these is 
equal to the sense of obligation; all together they can- 
not take the place of that. They are to the sense of 
obligation like soldiers-to their commander. They are 
like the Army of the Potomac to General Grant. The 
army is helpless without him, it is as likely to aid as to 
defeat the enemy, to rush on to ruin as to move to 
victory. The general takes the force of his army, 
covers it with his plan, controls it with his will, carries 
it to triumph by his skill. Thus the sense of obliga- 
tion works. It keeps the control of life in its own 
hands. It holds down the headlong sense of pleasure 
and ambition, the furious longing for eminence and 
power; it keeps heart and courage in the humble soul, 
and in all those who feel that they are of small account; 
it curbs the spirit of the reckless, and it greatens the 
soul of the lowly; it organizes all, drills all, commands 
all, and through the long campaign leads on to victory. 

Inspiration for honorable work is a doubtful thing; 
the desire for knowledge, place, power, pleasure, praise, 
is unreliable; it is like the rainfall in the tropics, a 
flood this month and a famine the next. The people 
who work by spells are the saddest of all workmen; 
they wait for wind and tide, and they are half the time 
helpless. They are creatures of impulse and chance, 
and you may have them with you today but you can- 
not count upon them tomorrow. You go by the sense 
of duty and your friend goes on impulse. That means 
that the steamer and the sailing vessel are trying to 

[116 ] 


The Sense of Obligation 


cross the ocean together. It is impossible. The thing 
that goes by a constant inspiration cannot wait for 
the companionship of anything whose inspiration is in- 
constant and as likely to be contrary as concurrent. Go 
through life in all its departments and you will see 
the desperate condition to which they come who depend 
for their final inspiration upon anything except con- 
science. There is an Atlas in every human soul, some- 
thing from God strong enough to stand under the heav- 
iest burden, great enough to support the world and 
carry it whithersoever one will, with a courageous 
heart, and that Atlas, that world-supporting hero, is 
the sense of obligation. 


IV 

Confidence in the reality of the future comes largely 
through conscience. The wish for existence beyond 
death is natural, but it may be vain. The intellectual 
capacity for endless improvement is a prophecy of 
permanence, but the prophecy may be untrue. The 
love that counts human life too precious to end at the 
grave is great. In times of full humanity nothing can 
be more commanding than this voice of love. Yet 
there are hours when the universe seems to contradict 
the estimate which we place upon life. We think that 
those whom we love are too precious to perish for- 
ever, and the insight of love would seem to justify 
this august estimate as the estimate of God. Yet love 
needs the support of conscience. Men are here on a 
moral errand; all that they do concerns the conscience 
of God. They are answerable to God for the use and 
abuse of life, for the manner in which their errand is 
done or left undone, for the rectitude and the iniquity 

[117 ] 


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of existence. This interpretation of human existence 
through conscience scatters to the winds all doubt 
about the reality of the hereafter. Men are bound 
in a moral fellowship, the meaning of life consists in 
moral integrity, the constant law of life is moral 
accountability, the supreme issue of life is moral judg- 
ment. Life is thus set in immediate and permanent 
relation to the Eternal Conscience. We are, even now, 
through the normal action of conscience, in serious 
intercourse with God. The moral sense in its reflec- 
tion upon present issues, in its retrospective praise and 
blame, and in its high and persistent anticipation of 
final approbation and rebuke, is nothing less than a 
mute and awful dialogue with God. 

It is impossible to look at life in this way and yet 
to doubt that it goes on. According to this interpreta- 
tion of existence the fact of permanence is assured. 
It is given in the very meaning of the human career. 
The anxiety passes over from the fact of future exist- 
ence to the kind of existence which one’s conduct 
entitles one to expect; the solicitude is no longer about 
being, but about God’s judgment upon being. 

Here is the grandeur of the Puritan inheritance. It 
was the interpretation of life through conscience. The 
typical Puritan lived under the Great Taskmaster’s 
eye. He felt in his heart of hearts his amenableness to 
God for the deeds done in the body. His whole exist- 
ence was held under moral law, subject to moral judg- 
ment, with everlasting moral issues. The Puritan 
deathbed was sublime. It was the return of one sent 
upon a moral errand, that he might give an account of 
himself. Oliver Cromwell, greatest of the Puritans, | 
was a true Puritan in the hour of death; the moral 

[118 ] 


The Sense of Obligation 


conception of life filled and well-nigh overwhelmed his 
mind; while disease was tearing the body to pieces, 
his intelligence was engaged with the moral issues of 
his behavior in this world, with the ideas of the right- 
eous God, the righteous requirement laid upon man, 
the righteous judgment to which man is subject, and 
the gracious father in the gracious Christ, and faith, 
trust and eternal peace. What a deathbed is that! 
What moral sublimities in the heart of physical frailties 
and distresses! What mockery annihilation seems to 
be to this high mood sure of its return and its account- 
ability to God! 


y, 


Upon this matter of future existence we have kept 
our natural wishes, we have preserved the sense of our 
intellectual capacities, we have held to the witness of 
love; but have we not lost our consciences? ‘Dost 
thou not even fear God,” was the cry of the penitent 
to the impenitent thief, “seeing thou art in the same 
condemnation. And we indeed justly; for we receive 
the due rewards of our deeds; but this man hath done 
nothing amiss.” There is the clear, grand, sovereign 
play of conscience; and out of conscience came the 
great prayer, “Jesus, remember me when thou comest 
in thy kingdom.” 

The trouble with the man with the one talent was 
that he had lost the sense of obligation. The word 
“ought” was not in his speech, the thought which it 
covers was not in his mind. This was the essential 
source of his discouragement. There was indeed for 
him no hope of leadership or eminence of any kind; 
the inspirations that come from distinction were 

[119 ] 


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denied; hence the apathy that seized him; hence the 
mere wild likes and dislikes that ruled and that ruined 
his career. If he had possessed the sense of obligation, 
if he had only opposed to discouragement and passion 
the quiet force of conscience, if he had said to all the 
pleadings of laziness and selfishness, “I ought to do 
my duty,’ his career would have been an inspiring 
success. Then his little achievement with his little 
power would have set the world’s heart on fire for ages. 
It would have been the parallel to the widow’s mite. 
The infinitesimal gift from the infinitesimal store 
becomes of unsurpassed magnitude. The humblest 
life given to God in conscientious service becomes, 
through its humble issues, among the burning and 
shining lights of the world. 

The trouble with us all is here. We need a deeper 
sense of obligation. We need to consult our pleasure 
less and less and our conscience more and more. For 
the sense of God in his world and the souls of men, 
for the consciousness of the eternal moral order upon 
which human life rests, we must consult our conscience. 
For the great sentiment of reverence in the presence 
of man’s existence we must ultimately depend not 
upon sympathy, or love, or the sense of brotherhood, 
but upon the sense of obligation. Inspiration with 
the fullness of the river of God comes not through 
desire of knowledge or power or place or praise, but 
through the passion for righteousness. Certainty about 
the future can never be the fruit of our wishes, our 
mere capacities for growth, not even of our love; it is 
the answer to our conscience. When we interpret life 
through the sense of obligation, when we keep the 
word “ought” supreme in our speech, when we look 

[ 120 ] 


The Sense of Obligation 


upon our pilgrimage here as a moral errand, when we 
say in our hearts with awe and solemn joy, “We must 
all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to give 
an account of the deeds done in the body,” we shall 
live in the happy certainty of the life with God 
beyond time, 


[121] 








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NEWELL Dwicut HILuIs 


For twenty years Dr. Hillis stood at the zenith of popu- 
larity among American preachers. He leaped into general 
fame by his call in 1895 to succeed Professor David Swing 
in the conspicuous pulpit of the independent Central 
Church of Chicago, and from that high place was called 
to the pulpit made famous by Henry Ward Beecher, that 
of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, where he succeeded Dr. 
Lyman Abbott. This was in 1899. Dr. Hillis continued 
his ministry in Plymouth Church until 1923 when illness 
rendered him unable to carry the responsibility further, 
and he was made pastor-emeritus. 

Dr. Hillis was born at Magnolia, Iowa, in 1858. He took 
his A.B. and A.M. degree at Lake Forest University and 
was graduated from McCormick Theological Seminary in 
1887. Ordained to the Presbyterian ministry he found his 
first pastorate in Peoria, Illinois, from whence he was called 
to the pulpit of First Presbyterian Church, Evanston, I[lh- 
nois. Here his brilliant and distinctive style drew the at- 
tention of Chicago’s cultured public to him, and with the 
passing of Professor Swing he was the inevitable successor 
to that poet-preacher’s mantle. His sermons preached from 
this metropolitan pulpit were published in a Chicago news- 
paper every Monday morning. Throughout the nation it 
was made plain that a new star had arisen in the homiletical 
firmament. There were qualities in his sermon structure 
that marked him as an original contributor to sermonic 
method. Books also came swiftly from his pen. His 
earliest, A Man’s Value to Society, and The Investment of 
Influence attained wide circulation. Other titles, such as 
Great Books as Life Teachers, The Influence of Christ in 
Modern Life, The Quest of Happiness, Building a Working 

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Faith, The Contagion of Character, Prophets of a New 
Era, Lectures and Orations of Henry Ward Beecher, Ger- 
man Atrocities, etc., have been widely read. In his latest 
book, The Great Refusal, Dr. Hillis shows signs of con- 
siderable modification of his characteristic style. There is 
less display of literary erudition, and a more forthright 
coming to terms with the moral problems of life. At the 
present time Dr. Hillis is at work upon a life of Christ. 
He includes a trip to Palestine as a chapter in the study 
of his theme before putting the touch of finality upon his 
interpretation. Northwestern University conferred upon 
him the D.D. degree in 1892, and later Western Reserve 
University gave him the degree of L.H.D. 


[ 124 ] 


“THERE GO THE SHIPS” 


By Newe.tu Dwicut HILuis 
‘‘There go the ships’’.—Psalm 104 :26 


This dreamer of dreams about ships was King Solo- 
mon, at once the wisest, the richest and the saddest 
man of his times. The occasion of his words was a 
visit to the capital of Hiram, king of Tyre. Standing 
upon the colonnade of the royal palace, Solomon 
looked down upon the harbor of Tyre and saw ships 
laden with wheat from Egypt; with tin from England; 
with gold and gems from Africa. The sight of these 
weatherbeaten ships kindled Solomon’s imagination 
and set his pulses bounding. His Hebrew people were 
a non-seagoing folk. All their investments were related 
to the land—to flocks and herds, to looms and silk and 
wool, to oil and wine, to wedges of silver and gold. 
Something took fire in the mind of the ambitious 
king. He began to dream about a world-trade and a 
world-commerce. In his dreams of a new era for his 
country, King Solomon saw rivers become lanes of 
trade, saw seas as broad streets, saw harbors as world 
markets. “There go the ships’—and the control of 
lands with them! For Solomon, ships became shuttles 
flying across the seas of time into the far-off harbors of 
wealth and influence. When the Golden Age comes, 
it will come, please God! riding upon the prows of 
ships. Perhaps the world shall yet be done—God’s 
world. By what agency? The answer was at hand— 
“There go the ships!” 

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I 

Yonder goes a ship from Homer’s Troy to Philippi 
in Greece. For all lovers of literature, Troy is the city 
of poetry, romance and beauty. It is the city of brave 
_Hector and loyal Penelope; of Achilles and Ulysses; 
of the Iliad and the Odyssey. But the greatest moment 
that ever came to Troy was the moment when Paul 
entered that city of romance and battles. Than Paul, 
no greater hero ever walked our earth. As theologian, 
he gave the principles of fundamental thinking to 
every Augustine, Calvin, and Edwards. As philosopher, 
he gave us God, freedom, and immortality. As reformer, 
he attacked many social evils that were crawling like 
slimy serpents over the threshold of ancient society. 
As author, he wrote the odes to love and immortality. 
The little boat that brought Paul to Europe brought 
statesmanship—modern democracy, liberty of thought 
and liberty of speech. Freedom of the press also 
came to Europe in the little ship. More important 
still, Paul was earth’s greatest moral hero. All the 
sufferings that Paul endured for his great convictions— 
through stonings, mobbings, scourgings and the heads- 
man’s ax—would have made one hundred men immor- 
tal in the history of heroism. When Paul uttered that 
word, “Every man shall give an account of himself 
unto God,” he doomed every form of autocracy, politi- 
cal, industrial, and ecclesiastical. Instead of artificial 
kings and emperors, natural kings crowned by God 
became the divine rulers. 

Bacon once said that a great man rides upon his 
book as upon a boat across the seas of time. And won- 
derful the influence of the little boat that carried the 
great apostle across the Isles of Greece. There will be 

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born a hundred Washingtons and a thousand Napo- 
leons before there will ever be another Paul! To take 
Paul and his thinking out of this earthly scene, would 
be like taking a star out of yonder sky, leaving thick 
darkness to chill the world. Paul and Freedom—they . 
have one monument. That monument is one that will 
outlast marble and bronze. 


II 

“There goes a ship.” It sailed from Calais in France, 
its port was a harbor in England, its passenger was 
Augustine, sent by Gregory, bishop of Rome. The 
soldiers of Julius Cesar, returning from York and 
Chester, carried with them many stories of these 
Angles who held their annual meetings to distribute 
their lands and pass their laws... They were light of 
hair, with blue eyes and ruddy skin and strong bodies, 
but they were spoken of as “a sodden people giving 
themselves to much flesh and drink.” One thing was 
plain to all—they loved and practiced freedom. They 
were serious-minded men. ‘They tried to follow the 
gleam. They held fast to their great moral convictions. 

There is a legend that illustrates mental hunger. 
When the missionary, Augustine, was taken to the 
camp of King Ethelbert “the Red,” a heavy snowstorm 
was raging. As the stranger stood up to speak, a bird 
flew in through the open door of the banquet hall. 
When Augustine had told the story of the “good news,” 
one of the lesser chiefs arose in his place and addressed 
the King: 

“On this night of snow and hail, yonder door 
opened and a little bird flew in hiding from the 
storm. Here the bird found food and warmth, but 

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when the door opens again, it will fly out into the 
night. Not otherwise is it with man. Out of the 
dark man comes: here he feasts at this board, but 
it is for a moment only. Into the night man soon 
disappears. If, therefore, this stranger can tell 
us whence man cometh and whither man goeth, 
and for what end he is here, he will do us much 
good. Let us, therefore, appoint to this man a 
house. Let this stranger eat with us at this com- 
mon board that we may know what secret he 
has for us.” 


That event took place in the year 597. Then more 
than a thousand years came and went. Cannibalism 
passed away. War clubs disappeared. Manners 
changed. The language became the language of 
Shakespeare, Milton and Bunyan. England became 
the land of Oxford and Cambridge, the land of York 
Minster and Westminster Abbey; a land of religion 
and toleration, government and justice, of property 
with good will and fair play. There goes Augustine’s 
ship, and England’s future goes with it. But for that 
little ship of that first teacher, Shakespeare could not 
have called the land of such souls, “that dear, dear 
land.” 


III 


Yonder, into the west, go three little ships, and the 
captain upon the prow of the Santa Maria is Colum- 
bus. A great ambition heaves his soul, as the tide 
heaves the sea. The teachings of Galileo have con- 
vineed Columbus that the earth must be round and 
that there must be a short route to India. In his hand 


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he holds a piece of strange driftwood that has been 
tossed upon the shores of Spain. The Italian captain 
is certain that this strange tree did not grow on the 
shores of Europe. He is equally certain that the pebble 
caught in the crevice came from some far off western 
land. He determined to test his theories. Going from 
capital to capital, Columbus asked assistance from 
different kings. At last, he came to Spain. Ferdinand 
and Isabella were on the throne. These monarchs 
loaned him three little ships to test out his great experi- 
ment. Taking his courage in his hand, Columbus sailed 
into the golden west. When the ships had been out a 
few days, fear got hold of the sailors and shook them 
until they meditated suicide. But threats and menaces 
could not make Columbus turn back to Spain. Finaily, 
by sheer force of manhood, Columbus cowed these 
weaklings and forced them to sail on and on, conceal- 
ing from them the distance they had already gone. 
Many weeks passed. One afternoon, he noticed a 
golden bough from some strange tree floating in the 
waters. That night also he thought he saw men stand- 
ing upon the shore. When morning came, he looked 
upon a world new and hitherto unknown. Never did 
any man bring gifts so rich to his king and queen! 
When the people of Europe heard his wondrous 
story, they were dumfounded. They did not dream 
that only a tithe of the full story had been told. How 
could they know that this was a continent whose two 
oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific, were separated by 
more than three thousand miles of land; that, here, 
rivers ran two thousand miles from the great plains, on 
toward the ocean, or that these two continents had 
homes for hundreds of millions of people? Soon the 
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gold and silver brought from the new world stimulated 
the trade of all Europe. The old world wakened from 
the sleep of the dark ages. Wealth came in upon Spain 
like a golden river. The king of Spain became at once 
the ruler of Belgium and Holland, king of Italy, 
Emperor of Germany. Then the imagination of Cabot, 
Raleigh and Drake took fire. English ships began to 
explore every bay and inlet of the new continent. With 
commerce came prosperity; with prosperity came edu- 
cation, art, trade, literature. 

Now that centuries have passed, what achievement 
of man’s intellect is comparable to that of Columbus, 
who put out to sea in his tiny little ship of scarce a 
hundred tons and brought back, as cargo, two conti- 
nents that were ten thousand miles in length? The 
name of that continent was Opportunity. Columbus 
made San Salvador to be the Bethlehem of a new civ- 
ilization. ‘“What force can end the dark ages?” Then 
a voice answered—“There go the ships.” 


IV 

After Columbus, one hundred and thirty years passed 
by. One day shouts were heard and men exclaimed, 
“There goes the Mayflower.” One morning, a group of 
Pilgrims, headed by their minister, marched in proces- 
sion from the little church in Delft Haven down to 
the shore. Kneeling upon the deck, John Robinson 
committed his company to that God who holds the sea 
in the hollow of his hand. There is a tradition that his 
text for that day was the glorious promise made to 
Abraham when he left his city of Ur: “Get thee 
out of thy country and thy kindred into a land 
that I will show thee, and in blessing I will bless 

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thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thee, and 
in thee and in thy children after thee shall all the fam- 
ilies of the earth be blessed.”’ What a moment for lib- 
erty was that! More glorious promise was never given 
save only to him whose name is above every name. 
Then the Pilgrim fathers put out to sea, not knowing 
that there was an unseen Pilot on the deck, an unseen 
chart and compass given for their guidance. 

Carlyle thought the Mayflower carried the most pre- 
cious cargo of any ship that ever sailed the sea. Not 
the Santa Maria, not Jason’s Argo but the Pilgrim ship 
kindled the enthusiasm of Carlyle. Another day came 
when the Pilgrim fathers signed their compact in the 
cabin of the Mayflower. Daniel Webster called that 
compact “the seed corn of the constitution,” and long 
afterwards Gladstone called the American constitution 
“the most important instrument ever struck off by the 
unaided genius of man.” Just as all forests of oak were 
once latent in the first acorn; just as all mighty engines 
were latent in James Watts’ rude tool, so our American 
constitution and the twenty-five resultant republics 
of our earth were latent in the compact of the May- 
flower. In the broad sense, the American constitution 
is nothing other than the visions of freedom and self- 
government that filled the souls of Hampden and Mil- 
ton, of Cromwell and Brewster and Bradford and filled 
them all their lives long! Therefore students of the 
rise of liberty have said such things about the May- 
flower and its influence on democracy as have never 
been said about any other ship in history. Wonderful 
the new fleets of modern commerce! Marvelous the 
treasure ships of the new inventors! But let us hasten 
to confess, the most important ship in history is this 

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ship, the Mayflower, bearing the Pilgrim fathers to the 
new world. 


V 


Yonder goes a little Dutch ship upon its world voy- 
age. Hidden in the hold is a shoemaker called the 
“inspired cobbler.” While working at his bench, Wil- 
liam Carey read the command, “Go ye into all the 
world and tell the good news to every creature.” 
Assembling his friends, the shoemaker told them that 
God commits great things unto men, and expects great 
things from men. Meanwhile, the greatest wit and 
bishop of his time, Sydney Smith, bade Carey “mind 
his own business,” saying that if God wanted the 
heathen converted, he would do this in his own way 
and time. Denied passage upon a ship of England, 
William Carey went over to Holland and took passage 
to Bombay upon a Dutch ship. He slept in the steer- 
age, ate with the sailors, nursed the sick, and after 
incredible sufferings was dumped upon the shores of 
India. Soon he committed to memory the story of the 
prodigal son and of the crucifixion of Jesus. Standing 
upon the street corners he recited in Hindustani the 
story of the love of God and moved the Indian people 
to prayers and tears. Finding that he must support 
his own mission, Carey went into the production of 
indigo. He paid his helpers fully double what others 
paid or they could earn for themselves. He built 
churches, schools, and hospitals. He developed one of 
the great printing presses of the world. He founded a 
college that was to be attended by ten thousand 
natives. At night, while other men slept he toiled upon 
his dictionaries and grammars in Hindustani, Bengali, 

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and Telegu. He mastered the Sanskrit language. His 
fame was world-wide. One day there came from Eng- 
land an invitation offering the “inspired cobbler” the 
position of Head of Indian languages and Indian litera- 
ture in Oxford University. 

Then hundreds of other ships followed Garey: s; Mor- 
rison went to Shanghai, where he translated the Bible 
into Chinese; Moffat and Livingstone sailed to Africa; 
Paton went to the cannibals of the New Hebrides; 
James Chalmers—the ideal hero of “R. L. 8.”—gave his 
life on the bloody coast of New Guinea. Everywhere, 
from the rim of dark lands, columns of light with young 
teachers and physicians began to march toward the 
center of these unknown regions. Wonderful the influ- 
ence of those ships sailing toward these continents of 
darkness! And everywhere history tells us the same 
story: the new era began when some youth in his 
dream saw a man come down to the shore of the sea 
and call aloud saying, “Come over and help us.” At 
last an era came when men felt that no scholar could 
paint in colors too rich the future of the ‘“‘dark conti- 
nent.” Why? It is all in one word, “There go Living- 
stone’s ships.” 


VI 


“There go the ships”: this time, battleships going 
to make the world safe for democracy! Sailing from 
this new continent, they bore food, raiment, and 
weapons to an endangered world. When God made the 
seas, he made them free for all his sons! When a half- 
crazy kaiser announced that the seas were his and his 
alone, and began to sink many a Lusitania, lovers of 
their fellow-men rose up in such an outburst of moral 

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indignation as the world had never known! In that 
moment, men remembered the philosopher’s word that 
Christianity had brought to men “God, freedom, and 
immortality.” Without that freedom, men felt they 
could not live. 

Soon the battle of Armageddon was on. Armed hosts 
ravaged friendly towns and cities. Sea-wasps sank 
friendly ships carrying women and children. Flaming 
gases killed thousands of unsuspecting youths. Some, 
doubting, asked, “Does might now make right?” A 
dark hour came when it seemed as if militarism and 
autocracy would be victorious over democracy and lib- 
erty; over peace and fair play and good will. Then 
went forth the word, “Let us help British and French 
boys make the world safe for democracy.” Soon, look- 
ing down upon their harbors the people shouted, 
“There go the ships’; ships by thousands that carried 
two million of our soldier boys; merchant ships 
unafraid of submarines and undaunted; ships loaded 
with wheat and corn and cotton; ships carrying meat, 
leather, and iron; ships bringing tea from China and 
coffee from Brazil and sugar from Cuba. All the seas 
were white with sails. Months and years passed; six 
million tons of England’s shipping carrying men and 
goods went down; but for every ship that was sunk, 
two other ships hurried forward. 

At last the forces of lawlessness, autocracy, and mili- 
tarism surrendered. One day the word went forth that 
the seas again were free for self-governing republics. 
Many agencies combined to break the power of mili- 
tarism, but in calling the roll of the giant forces, we 
must make a large place for the ships that saved our 
liberty and even civilization itself! 

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VII 

“There go the ships’—dreadnoughts, battleships, 
destroyers, submarines, that maim and kill men. A wise 
president with a kindly heart, President Harding; a 
broad-minded, just, liberty-loving statesman named 
Hughes; England’s Balfour with his ripe experience as 
to world problems; France’s soldiers, Joffre and Foche; 
the representatives of Italy and Japan—went forth 
with their ships; and above every sea there rose the 
shout, “There go the ships,” with our representatives, 
to the conference upon the “limitation of armament.” 
Never were statesmen so determined to make war upon 
every kind of weapon! Never were jurists more 
thoughtful, prudent, sane, and just. The hour came 
when they signed their agreement to end war. Then 
the ships sailed home. 

Upon an appointed day, out of the various shipyards 
of widely separated continents, captains sailed out into 
the great deep, towing battleships and dreadnoughts 
and destroyers. Once more the bombs exploded, but 
this time not to sink merchant ships, but to destroy 
destroyers! Down, down into the abyss, sank these 
instruments of death. Best of all, hate and jealousy 
sank with the battleships and their bombs. That night, 
wireless telegrams of congratulation passed under the 
sea from one world capital to another, carrying con- 
gratulations to distant rulers and peoples. At last hate 
itself was death struck. The sword was broken across 
the worker’s anvil; the rifle was broken across the 
banker’s counter, and the statesman’s desk. It was as 
if all fiery voleanoes had been extinguished and all 
cyclones and tornadoes ended forever! 

At last the world has learned that war never settled 

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national problems. The German victory at Sedan did 
not settle the problem of Alsace and Lorraine. National 
victories put out, at compound interest, racial prob- 
lems. Military victories are sparks kindled and left to 
srow into conflagrations. But now comes the settle- 
ment of boundary lines by a world’s supreme court. 
Therefore these days are big with destiny. Take no 
counsel, then, of crouching fear! There is no room in 
the world for any prophet of ill-tidings! Pessimistic 
voices are like summer lightnings that flash on the 
horizon after the storm is over and the low rumbling is 
dying out of the sky. Gone the time when individuals 
will settle their disputes by duels. The era of Courts 
of Arbitration has finally come. Soon shall be heard 
the shout, “There go the ships.”’ What ships? Ships 
bearing representatives from every continent to the 
parliament of mankind, the federation of the world. 


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Lynn Haroutp HoucH 


It is doubtful that in all the range of the American pulpit 
there is another preacher whose talents reach into so many 
fields of human interest as is the case of Dr. Hough. So- 
cially minded and intensely contemporary in his outlook, 
he brings to every current question the kind of under- 
standing which can be gained only by long and joyous 
wandering up and down the highways and by-paths of 
history. Finding a theme or problem in modern life his 
favorite method is to carry it back into Greece or the early 
Christian centuries or the renaissance and, bringing it forth 
dripping with the juices of history, to urge his interpreta- 
tion upon the minds of his hearers in terms utterly modern 
and vital. If he does not actually execute this circuit 
in the presence of his auditors he never fails to do so in 
the background processes of his own mind. For his mes- 
sage is always seasoned with the wisdom of the ages, whose 
lore is the constant and established furnishing of his spirit. 
A British writer, commenting on Dr. Hough’s quality of 
mind on the occasion of his visit to England in 1925 to 
deliver the Fernley lecture before the British Wesleyan 
Conference, says: “Dr. Hough has the mental zest and 
appetite of an Italian scholar of the renaissance. More, 
perhaps than any man in the Anglo-American pulpit, he 
sees books and men and life in the radiant light which 
shone from those disinterred ‘brown Greek manuscripts’ 
into dark medieval cloisters. It is the light of discovery 
and rediscovery, the radiance of intellectual adventure and 
of a boundless belief in the capacities of man’s spirit.” 

Born in Ohio in 1877 he took his A.B. at Scio College, 
Ohio, in 1898, and his B.D. at Drew Theological Seminary 

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in 1905, studying further at New York University. Four 
institutions have conferred upon him the D.D. degree— 
Scio, Mt. Union, Garrett Biblical Institute, and Drew. 
From Drew he also received the degree of Th.D. Alle- 
gheny gave him Litt.D., and Albion, LL.D. His profes- 
sional career is marked by these milestones: pastor, Arcola, 
New Jersey; Cranford, New Jersey; King’s Park, New 
York; Third Church, Long Island City, New York; Sum- 
merfield Church, Brooklyn; Mt. Vernon Place, Baltimore, 
professor of historical theology Garrett Biblical Institute, 
president Northwestern University, and since 1920 pastor 
Central Methodist Episcopal Church, Detroit. Probably 
no American preacher is more eagerly heard in the great 
churches of England and Scotland, whose acquaintance he 
began to make in 1918 when as a messenger of American 
aims in the war he was sent to England by the Lindgren 
Foundation of Northwestern University. Dr. Hough has 
been a contributing editor of The Christian Century since 
1920. The titles of his books are: The Theology of a 
Preacher, A Living Book in a Living Age, The Productive 
Beliefs, Life and History, The Inevitable Book, Little Book 
of Sermons, The Imperial Voice, The Lion in His Den, and 
now in 1925, Evangelical Humanism. 


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f 


SHINING STARS OF EXPECTATION 
By Lynn Harotp HoveH 
“We saw his star in the East.”—Matthew ui, 2. 


Some men never see stars. They are not watching 
the sky with wistful eager eyes waiting for signs of a 
braver, better future. They never take long journeys in 
the name of moral expectation and spiritual hope. 
They have no imperishable dreams in their hearts 
which find an answering echo in the night sky. They 
miss a great deal. The great opportunities unseen pass 
them by. Only men with stars in their hearts can see 
the planets of promise flashing in the firmament above. 
The wise men who traveled from afar to find the infant 
Jesus are the perpetual symbol of that spirit of moral 
and spiritual adventure which believes in the future 
and finds in the very flaming orbs which glow in the 
night sky the promise of better things to come. They 
are always finding shining stars of expectation where 
other men with eyes cast down see only the dull, brown 
earth beneath their feet. These are the men who lead 
us forward. For when expectation dies progress is 
unknown, and when hope has entered the tomb crea- 
tive and noble activity soon follow. 

The great periods of the world’s life have been those 
when the sky was full of expectant stars. The heavy 
and unproductive periods have been those when nobody 
looked up. There is no more fundamental matter then 

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than that of finding the stars of hope. A man must not 
only hitch his wagon to a star. He must hitch his mind 
to a star. He must hitch his heart to a star. He must 
hiteh his will to a star. He must always be following 
the guidance of the heavenly light. He must be seeking 
some Bethlehem where a divine ideal enters human 
life. Ability without creative inspiration is impotent. 
Nothing else can take the place of shining stars of 
expectation. These fiery lights of promise shining in 
the darkest night of doubt in the firmament of the 
human heart are witnesses of the imperishable hope 
which carries humanity forward. 

Let us think together of some of these stars which we 
must find and follow in our own day. 


I 


There is a shining star of expectation in respect of 
the physical life of man. The body is our constant com- 
panion and men have had various attitudes toward it. 
Many aspiring spirits have sought to conquer it. They 
have set all the militant energies of their personality in 
battle array against its assertion of supremacy. Many 
men have surrendered to it. They have allowed the 
body to sit on the throne. They have allowed the spirit 
to abdicate. Some men have tried to ignore it. By 
ignoring it they have sought to transcend it. But 
neither the ascetic nor the voluptuary nor the puritan 
has found a satisfactory life. And neither has found a 
truly Christian attitude. There is a fourth possibility. 
And here lies the hope of a nobler life for the race, 
The body is to be made the vehicle of moral and spir- 
itual meanings. The physical is to be made the instru- 
ment of the unseen and the Eternal. 


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It is at this point that we come upon the strength of 
the sacramental view of life and of sacramental 
churches. And without surrendering to magical views 
of the relation between the material and the spiritual 
we may come to see that the very genius of the physi- 
cal, the climax of its development, is only understood 
when it becomes the visible expression of invisible 
values. The physical life of man is to be suffused with 
a quality which only comes when it is dominated by 
ereat ideals and great and commanding and noble 
sanctions. The man who thinks of his body as a foe to 
be conquered has a subtly wrong attitude. It is not a 
foe to be conquered. It is a friend to be welcomed to 
the activities of the great moral and spiritual tasks of 
life. It was made to be an instrument by which the 
invisible splendors of the spiritual world should become 
visible. What we call physical vice has an intellectual 
root. The mind sins and compels the body to follow. 
The body of a drunkard is his victim and not his 
tyrannical master. You always do a thing with your 
mind before you do it with your hand. So what we 
call the surrender to the body is really the surrender to 
a bad mind. The attempt to ignore the body is an 
aspect of the folly of leaving great energies unutilized. 
And these energies wholesome and noble in themselves 
are waiting to become the vehicle of the great eternal 
realities. 

Robert Browning put the matter with pardonable 
exaggeration when he declared that the soul does not 
help the body more than the body helps the soul. The 
gospel of the physical life as the ally of the spiritual 
vitalities will change the world for multitudes of young 
people, who, flooded with knowledge of physical proc- 

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esses, have come to think of the body as the foe of the 
invisible splendors of the life of the spirit. We do not 
go through life chained to a foe. We go through life 
with a supreme opportunity of guiding the physical 
to its true and normal goal in the service of the spiri- 
tual. There is a shining star of expectation here for 
every youth. And when you come to think of it the 
historic belief in the incarnation involves all this. Jesus 
could not have bound his spotless personality in a 
human body if the body were not the friend of the 
spiritual life. The Star of Bethlehem is a star of 
hope for the noble interpretation of the physical life. 


II 

There is astar of expectation in respect of the mentah 
life of the race. The life of the mind has several char- 
acteristic tragedies. One is the prostitution of the mind 
so that all its powers are used in a deft and adroit 
attempt to make the worse appear the better reason. 
Sophistry did not come to an end with the fall of 
ancient Athens. Another is getting lost in thought so 
that at last caught in the coils of its own processes our 
sense of reality is crowded and we become incapable of 
finding truth. The scholastic did not pass from the 
earth with the end of the Middle Ages. Even so noble 
a movement as modern science has proved capable of 
producing its own scholasticism. The recall to reality 
has always produced a new life for the mind. And in 
our days with a vaster array of technical knowledge 
than the world has ever known, we hear the call to 
place all this in its relation to the great personal and 
moral and spiritual experiences of the race. 

The insight that truth must be large enough to give 

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a home to every significant human experience is giving 
us a new attitude toward the mental tasks of life. It 
means that the personal adventures of the scientist as 
he discovers truth must be included in the philosophy 
of science. It means that the personal adventure of 
the discoverer of differential calculus must be included 
in the philosophy of mathematics. It means that the 
whole vital experience of man must be recognized and 
interpreted with a frank admission of its rights in the 
complete view of truth. It means that even science 
must cease to be parochial. 

This sense of the mind as a great adventurer, and of 
truth as a record of the great adventure brings all the 
romance back into mental activity. Instead of reducing 
personality to mechanics, it sees mechanics in the light 
of the experience of the person who uses the machine. 
It sees life from the standpoint of the inventor and not 
from that of the impersonal movement of the well- 
oiled machine. So the glory which has departed from 
every man who has ceased to think of truth as the 
experience of a person is being brought back again. 
The shining star of expectation glows in the sky of the 
mind. Here again the whole attitude of Jesus authenti- 
cates the fresh new insight. For him existence was 
personal. He saw everything in its relation to per- 
sonality. To him truth was the story of personal rela- 
tions, and things were significant only in relation to 
personality. So the Star of Bethlehem is the star of 
triumphant personality. When Jesus said “I am the 
truth” he recognized truth’s oneness with personality. 


TIT 
There is a shining star of expectation in respect of 
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the moral life of the world. The ethical experience of 
men has been characterized by manifold vicissitudes. 
Sometimes men’s very moral loyalty has been given to 
ends which were not moral. A man whose loyalty to 
our nation leads him to violate the rights of other 
nations is standing moral sanctions upon their heads. 
“His faith unfaithful makes him falsely true.” In all 
sorts of ways the moral life of man is a baffling and 
complicated matter. But it is coming to new hope in 
our own day through a fresh appreciation of the mean- 
ing of experience. We are coming to see that certain 
ethical sanctions are involved in the very structure of 
life and we are beginning to have a clear enough view 
of life to see that there is a kind of capacity for enforce- 
ment upon the part of these fundamental moral laws. 
As Gilbert Chesterton said, “When a man leaps from a 
high cliff he does not break the law of gravitation. He 
only illustrates it.” You cannot break our moral laws. 
You can only give them an opportunity to break 
you. 

So we are coming to understand that the moral sanc- 
tions not only live in the world of ideals, but that they 
also live in the world of facts. Men who once said that 
certain high moralities were impractical are learning 
that nothing else is practical. Men and institutions 
and civilizations which attempt to disobey the moral 
laws are ground to powder. Every period of ceaseless 
restlessness finds its body bruised as it is flung against 
a hard wall of moral fact. Emancipation from the 
moral restraints turns out to be nothing more than the 
choice of chains which will bear us to the ground. 
When men refuse to accept a moral ideal as a friend 
that meral ideal always returns as an executioner. 

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Shining Stars of Expectation 


Morality itself has a practical potency which is sin- 
gularly convincing. And all this sternly tragic as it 
is fills the men who believe in goodness with an awed 
and reverent joy. For only a world where goodness is 
structural is safe for a single tender and gracious 
virtue. 

But, more than this, we are beginning to learn that 
in a great many moral matters the world has been 
suffering from what the Freudians might call an inferi- 
ority complex. We have been defeated because we 
expected to be defeated. We have subtly assumed 
that of course some matters were too high for us, and 
so we have not reached them. The new psychology 
with all its faults at least enables us to see the fallacy 
of surrendering to a merely imaginative sense of inca- 
pacity. The relation between men and women would 
have been nobler for the last two thousand years if 
men had not cravenly surrendered to an inferiority 
complex whenever they thought of these things. The 
unexpressed feeling that of course he would fail sooner 
or later has been the very reason for much of the moral 
failure which has darkened the life of man. The new 
psychology is giving a fresh meaning to Emerson’s 
words: 


When duty whispers “Lo, thou must,” 
The youth replies, “I can!” 


In these matters, too, the attitude of Jesus is the 
one toward which we are coming. The man who feels 
that the moral law is a fragile piece of china which 
may fall and break any moment has never appreciated 
the constant assumptions of Jesus. And the man who 
approaches moral fights with a sense that he is fore- 


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doomed to failure, has not appropriated the spirit of 
the Gospel. The Star of Bethlehem is a star of moral 
assurance and of moral hope. 


IV 

There is a shining star of expectation in respect of 
the industrial life of the world. To be sure, it is a star 
shining in the night sky. And the night may seem 
dark enough. The modern organization of life is capa- 
ble of crushing the individual and of creating institu- 
tions of mammoth selfishness whose very efficiency will 
wreck the world and destroy civilization. It may seem 
that our very achievements have raised up a Franken- 
stein which is destined to destroy us. It is scarcely 
strange that the mind of that baffling, elusive and fas- 
cinating saint and politician, Mahatma Gandhi, has 
attempted to cut through the confusion by repudiating 
our whole modern system of organized industrial life. 
“Back to the spinning wheel’ may seem a strange 
slogan. It is not without tremendous meaning for 
those who understand how near we may be to the 
breakdown of civilization itself. Yet this is scarcely 
the way out. And as we ponder on the difficult prob- 
lem we are ready to see the shining of a star of promise 
in the night sky. Suppose we should organize for the 
sake of conserving personality as well as for the sake 
of conserving material values. Suppose we should 
make our organization the method by which person- 
ality expresses itself instead of a method by which per- 
sonality is thwarted and all too often exploited. Sup- 
pose we should put human values at the very heart of 
the whole system. Suppose the great product of all 
our vast organization should be the captain in the serv- 

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Shining Stars of Expectation 


ice of humanity. Then the system would prove the 
slave of humanity and’ not its master. 

As a matter of fact, all economic and industrial proc- 
esses tend to break down and disintegrate unless per- 
sonality is kept at the very heart of everything else. 
The perpetuity of machinery is bound up with its serv- 
ice of humanity. Organization can only live as it ac- 
knowledges the lordship of the personal. There are 
signs not a few that these deep relationships are being 
understood more and more by men in command of the 
forces of economic and industrial life. It is not too 
much to hope that the monster of organization we 
have created may be turned into a household slave. 
And just because it is so clear that unless it is domes- 
ticated there will be no hope for anyone in any group, 
the promise of something better is all the more defi- 
nite. 

Here again the spirit of Jesus is a mighty reinforce- 
ment. You cannot admit him to our economic and 
industrial pursuits without an immediate amelioration 
of their pressure upon the personal life. A new per- 
spective is realized the moment his presence is felt. 
The Star of Bethlehem is a star of hope for the eco- 
monic and industrial world. 


V 
There is a shining star of expectation in respect of 
the social life of the world. The student of the great 
societies is gradually becoming aware of a tremendous 
fact. This may be put in rather blunt and homely 
fashion in these words: The golden rule works back- 
ward. It is not merely an ideal. It is a judge which 
pronounces sentences and enforces them. The golden 
| [147] 


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rule as poetry is rather likely to be lovely but im- 
potent. The golden rule as a grave and unhesitating 
Nemesis is rather likely to be taken seriously. Since 
the world war we are learning that if we do not learn 
to live like brothers we will bring the roof down upon 
the whole mass of men and women who make up the 
civilized world. And as Dr. John Kelman once bril- 
liantly put it, we will bring the world to the place 
where there are not even hovels, there are only graves. 
Strangely enough there are multitudes of men who 
seem only capable of becoming idealists when they 
confront the prospect of immediate catastrophe. And 
for such just now there is plenty of potential catas- 
trophe to be confronted. Out of all this a new sense 
that the structure of life itself is on the side of brother- 
hood is emerging. In the long run we must be broth- 
ers if we are going to be at all. 

Here again the ugly and bitter fact is the reverse 
side of what becomes a glowing and creative reality in 
the person and work of Jesus. He not only teaches 
brotherhood. He transfigures it. And he pours into 
life the whole series of motives which renew the social 
relations of men. When we draw back with a shock 
from a sense of impending catastrophe our eyes are 
somehow cleansed and our imaginations quickened so 
that we can understand the structure of love which 
Jesus Christ is building in the world. That structure 
is the world’s hope. The star of Bethlehem has the 
promise of the new society in it. 


VI 
Last of all, and most important of all, we may find 
a shining star of expectation in respect of the spiritual 
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Shining Stars of Expectation 


life of the world. There are moments when we are 
tempted to paraphrase the words of Emerson uttered 
in an unwonted mood of pessimism and to declare that 
the material sitting firmly in the saddle gallops toward 
the destructive precipices beyond which lies the deep 
abyss. But there is a deep sense in which the cult of 
the material carries its cure in the heart of it. For 
the material wears out. And interest in the material 
wears out. The hopeless ennui which descends upon 
the life devoted only to the physical tells its own tre- 
mendously significant story. If aman lives merely on 
the level of the senses, “wine, women and song” come 
at last to have a strange and unfathomable inner dis- 
gust. Vice can only be kept alluring by some pretense 
of spiritual beauty. When a man actually sees that 
what he thought the emblem of a new freedom, a large 
and rich enfranchisement, is only the old brutal slav- 
ery wearing garments it has stolen, only the old beastly 
lust telling les about itself, the fascination fades in a 
bitter disillusionment. The fact is humanity would 
be infinitely bored if it did not have access to spiritual 
hopes. Only the spiritual does not wear out. Anda 
personality with eternity set in its heart must at last 
turn from the husks to think of the father’s house. 
The revolt from merely material satisfaction is an 
inevitable result of the constitution of man. 

So it comes to pass that the very age of spectacular 
material splendors and physical satisfactions is to see 
the revealing of the complete bankruptcy of the mate- 
rial and the physical. The unappeasable cry of the 
spirit reverberates in the depths of the life of man. 
Even the strange and bizarre cults which try to answer 
the call are a proof of the power of the impulse to find 

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food for the soul. The starving epicures, the anaemic 
sybarites, the emaciated dwellers in soulless palaces 
feel at last an inner revolt against the apples of Sodom 
which are only dust and ashes. The next great revival 
may come from the utter disillusionment of the rich. 
Poverty is always in danger of being tempted to think 
that wealth would satisfy. Wealth learns at last its 
own poverty. 

And so the spiritual life emerges once more mighty 
and imperial. And in the face of such disillusionment 
it comes with a power which sweeps its sanctions into 
the very secret places of human consciousness. When 
a highly gifted, achieving, wealthy race learns that 
what it called clothes have left it naked, what is called 
food has left it hungry, what is called satisfaction has 
never touched the sources of desire, it begins to call 
like a lonely child in the night. And that inarticulate 
cry is a call for God. Then the star appears. And the 
star is the Star of Bethlehem. 


[ 150 J 


Epwin Hour Hugues 


Bishop Hughes fulfills in his ministry a family tradition 
of preaching covering three generations. His father and 
his grandfather were Methodist circuit-riders of the hardy 
and devoted sort from which our classic conception of 
that brave and indefatigable missioner of the frontier is 
derived. The spirit of that lusty race of evangelists is in 
the modern bishop, albeit tempered by culture and the 
responsibilities peculiar to a highly organized church in a 
settled society. He rides in Pullmans where his forbears 
rode in the saddle across the hills of West Virginia. One 
has only to watch Bishop Hughes in the pulpit to see a 
marvelous example of spiritual heredity. A master of 
assemblies, the words come tumbling out in a torrent of 
passion, or are driven home with a deliberation of manner 
which underscores the importance of every syllable. And 
into the midst of his sermons there fall illustrations amaz- 
ingly apt and yet of the homeliest texture, or sallies of wit 
that shake speaker as well as congregation, but leave the 
truth at which the bishop is aiming clear in the mind of 
every listener. Bishop Hughes is not bound by the customs 
of the pulpit; he is bound to stir the souls of men. 

Born in West Virginia, in 1866, Bishop Hughes studied 
in West Virginia University and Iowa College, and took 
his A.B. degree’ at Ohio Wesleyan in 1889, and his A.M. 
degree in 1892. He was graduated from the theological 
school of Boston University in the same year, with the 
degree of S.T.B. He holds the LL.D. degree from De- 
Pauw, Ohio Wesleyan, and the University of Maine; the 
D.D. from Ohio Wesleyan; the 8.T.D. from Syracuse 
University, and the Litt.D. from West Virginia Wesleyan. 

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Bishop Hughes was ordained to the Methodist ministry 
on graduating from the theological seminary in 1892. He 
served two brilliant pastorates in Newton Centre and Mal- 
den, Massachusetts, and then accepted the presidency of 
DePauw University in 1903. It was while president of 
DePauw that the Bishop began to form those contacts with 
students which make him to this day one of the most effec- 
tive and popular speakers before student audiences in this 
country. After five years at DePauw the Methodist Gen- 
eral Conference of 1908 lifted him into the episcopacy of 
his church. He served his first two quadrenniums on the 
Pacific coast, with his episcopal residence in San Francisco, 
and then was stationed at Boston until 1924, when he be- 
came resident bishop in Chicago. As bishop he has been 
one of the acknowledged leaders of his denomination, with 
a leadership exerted through the power of his preaching 
and personality rather than through the administration of 
organizational details such as characterizes many contem- 
porary ecclesiastical officers. 

Such writing as Bishop Hughes has done has been uni- 
formly successful. A volume of Thanksgiving Sermons, an 
interpretation of A Boy’s Religion, a little book on The 
Teaching of Citizenship, and a series of lectures on The 
Bible and Life stand to his credit. But he is not, like his 
closest friend, Bishop McConnell, given to working out his 
ideas on paper. He prefers rather to take them into the 
pulpit and hammer them out there, where he can watch 
the effect of the words as they fall on living men and 
women. The sermon printed here is a good example of 
his preaching. It is hard to read it, even in this formal 
presentation, without a stirring of the pulse. It takes 
little imagination to understand what its effect must be 
once it is translated into the warm atmosphere of an 
expectant congregation. 


[ 152 ] 


FOR GOD’S SAKE 
By Epwin H. HucHEs 


“T, even I,am he that blotteth out thy transgres- 
stons for my own sake.”—Isaiah xliil, 25. 


The prophet represents that God is the speaker. 
His wayward people is the audience. The language, 
crowded with personal pronouns, is the language of 
great yearning and suggests a beseeching Lord. We 
feel at once that the words would be quite at home in 
the New Testament; and we can even imagine them 
on the lips of Christ himselfi—they make us under- 
stand why some have called Isaiah, whether first or 
second, the “evangelical” prophet; for there is here a 
piercing insight into the heart of a redeeming God. 

That insight is in no way more revealed than in the 
location of the forgiving motive. Often the scriptures 
reverse our expectations. The signal illustrations may 
be the instances where a statement is made that is 
apparently contradictory and yet deeply and everlast- 
ingly true—as, for example, that dying is living, weak- 
ness is strength, and having nothing is possessing all 
things. Yet the minor illustrations are seen in cases 
where the emphasis is different from our own. Consid- 
ering the text as showing an evangelistic Lord, we are 
interested in the fact that the motive for the forgive- 
ness of human transgression is placed in the divine 
heart. He blots out sins for his own sake. There is 
a reason for forgiveness in himself. 


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I 


The usual presentation puts the motive on the 
human side. We ask men to receive forgiveness for 
their own sakes. We tell them well and truly that 
they carry in their own natures insistent needs for 
pardoning grace. Nor do we lack for outer symbols of 
those inner needs. We say to the drunkard that if 
he will come to God for forgiveness and redemption, 
the cleansing power will remove the bloat from his 
body, the blear from his eye, the blotch from his face. 
Where the offense is less coarse, but not less terrible, 
we still plead with people for themselves, saying that 
the divine grace in the cure of jealousy or envy will 
bring to the freed soul the generous mood that in itself 
is peace. In other words, we have a right to put a 
reverent change into the speech of God and to declare 
that he says to each person, “I, even I, am he that blot- 
teth out thy transgressions for thine own sake.” The 
witnesses of that motive are almost as many as are the 
redeemed. Paul, and Origen, and Augustine, and 
Luther, and Francis of Assisi, and Wesley, and Moody 
would all bring testimony that their own sakes called 
for the plenteous redemption of God. To him they 
came because their hearts cried out for the living One, 
and because they knew that their rest was in him 
alone. 

Yet it is good and persuasive to discover the mutual- 
ity of the transaction—to find that the pardon con- 
ferred by the wondrous God is for his sake as well as 
for our own. With reference to a longed-for compan- 
ionship Christ stated much the same kindly law: 
“Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given 
me, be with me where I am.” It is really quite dread- 

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For God’s Sake 


ful to be where you are not wanted. When we discov- 
ered in childhood that we were “taggers on,” the reve- 
lation brought a hurt to the heart; and when later we 
had occasion to feel that we were unwelcome guests, 
the experience became a bitter one, and no outward 
entertainment could ever compensate for the lack of 
the inner hospitality. In all satisfying relationships 
there is that element of mutuality. There is, there- 
fore, a sober joy in the assurance that when we draw 
nigh to God, God draws nigh to us; and that, even as 
we seek to receive pardon, so God seeks to give par- 
don. In forgiveness it is not an unwilling man seeking 
a willing God; nor yet a willing man seeking an un- 
willing God; it is rather the willing man met by the 
willing God. Going to him for our own sakes, we find 
that he comes to us for his own sake. 


II 

All of this gives the surety that, since there is rest- 
lessness in the divine heart when God cannot forgive, 
so there is peacefulness in the divine heart when God 
can forgive. With him, then, there remains always 
the double possibility of sorrow and joy. Speaking 
philosophically, we may shrink from the thought of 
a God who knows sorrow, but we still find no refuge 
for our thinking in a God who is so limited that he 
cannot suffer. If we are made in the divine image, 
then our double capacity for sorrow and joy must 
stand for something in the eternal nature. When we 
follow the Bible through with this twofold test, we 
find abundant evidences of a sorrowing God and of a 
rejoicing God. Or, if we care to fall back upon the 
text’s phrase, we find that there are things that God 


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did for his own sake. Creation, by whatever form it 
came, must have met a desire of the eternal Spirit. 
Especially the creation of human beings must mean 
that the everlasting fatherhood expressed itself in the 
lives of countless children. The Incarnation must 
have been the highest effort of an anxious God to enter 
into the experiences of men. There must be partial 
truth, if not total truth, in the statement that God 
made the world, and peopled it, and came into its life 
for his own sake; and that the denied fellowship with 
his people brings him pain while the granted fellow- 
ship brings him gladness. 

Speaking experimentally, we note that as rank goes 
up, capacity for sorrow and capacity for joy both in- 
crease. One cannot excite much sympathy with the 
story of a pained or delighted polyp! Though the 
oyster be far higher in its vital organization, its pains 
and pleasures do not greatly move us. But when we 
reach the grade of higher life, we find that the birds 
have their songs of joy and their shrill notes of anx- 
iety, and that they mourn over the broken nest and 
are glad over the restored young. When those two 
possibilities reach our human lives, both become fairly 
exquisite. How we can suffer physically! If a thou- 
sand needles be pressed into the quivering arm, we 
shrink in agony. Yet it is far worse to have an arm 
that would not quiver—because pain is surely better 
than paralysis! How we can suffer in the deeper 
ways! Waves of anxiety, and ofttimes of anguish, 
sweep over our spirits until we seem overwhelmed. And 
then again, how good and joyous life is! This enlarged 
double capacity always goes with the growing rank 
of being. We cannot conceive that it stops short when 

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For God’s Sake 


it comes to the nature of God. Some one wrote these 
words: 

Can it be, O Christ Eternal, 

That the wisest suffer most? 

That the mark of rank in nature 

Is capacity for pain? 

That the anguish of the singer 

Makes the sweetness of the strain? 


If, then, God be the wisest and the best, the laws of 
sorrow and joy come to their highest in him; and 
within the life of God himself sorrow and joy reach 


their climax in the rebellion or reconciliation of his 
children. 


iil 


If we return once more to the suggestion of our like- 
ness to God, we shall observe that we do many things 
for our own sakes. We pay our bills, even when our 
creditor is worth far more than we are—partly because 
self-respect demands payment. We strive to keep our 
gallantry and our consideration for others in places 
where the etiquette is an unknown book—hbecause the 
true gentleman is such even when all the lower pres- 
sures are removed. We deliberately vote a losing ticket, 
sometimes year after year, and we heed not the super- 
ficial cry about “throwing your vote away’—because 
we dare not throw our consciences away and lose even 
a fragment of our own souls. These inner compulsions 
of spirit, how they do rule us, almost as if there were 
a kingdom of self presided over by a king who must 
keep his dignity and character and not soil the purple 
of his own soul. If we were to make a list of the things 
that we do, or do not do, simply because certain per- 
suasions abide in our innermost natures, we should 


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find that large areas of life are affected, and that we 
are constantly doing things for our own sakes. 
When we pass into the realm of forgiveness and 
reconciliation, the law and likeness do not fail us. Two 
biblical figures of speech about God are based upon 
human relations, and in those relations we are ever- 
more finding lessons concerning him. One of these is 
represented by friendship, and the other by the family. 
The figure of speech based on friendship appears 
early in the Bible. Abraham, the father of the faith- 
ful multitude, gained the consciousness that he was 
“the friend of God,’ while in Chronicles there is a 
strong word of address to the Lord in which Abraham 
is called ‘‘thy friend forever.” But in friendship there 
must always be the mark of mutuality and reciprocity. 
God and Abraham are in the friendly covenant. The 
mood is not an abstraction; neither is it something 
hung in the social midair. Rather it is the joining of 
two lives in dear relations—with an interplay of love 
and help that must have meaning for each party in the 
spiritual transaction. Alice in Wonderland speculates 
on whether a cat’s smile is possible without a cat’s 
face, and reaches the conclusion that such a smile is 
not abstract. Neither is friendship abstract; it is 
doubly concrete. It unites God’s heart with a man’s 
heart; and the friendship has meaning for both. If 
man desires the divine friendship for man’s own sake, 
God desires the human friendship for God’s own sake. 
Two sakes are involved in the hallowed association. 


IV 
Yet there remains a tendency to regard God as an 
infinite iceberg, unmoved by our attitudes toward 
[ 158 } 


For God’s Sake 


himself. The correction of that tendency must come 
in part from any proper definition of friendship. With 
all of us advancing years lead to the feeling that the 
loss of a friend is an unspeakable tragedy. The nar- 
rowing circle on the earth makes us cling more closely 
to those who remain and dream more fondly of those 
who vanish from our immediate companionship; while 
the loss of any of them by misunderstanding and 
estrangement becomes a poignant sorrow. We seek 
reconciliation; and when we so do, we do not affirm 
egotistically that we do it solely for the old friends’ 
sake. Our own hearts are disturbed; and we cannot 
easily erase their names from the keepsake books. We 
go to them with a plea for restored friendship: and, as 
we go, each of us could say, “I, even I, am he that 
seeketh reconciliation for mine own sake.” 

All this must be a feeble commentary on the life of 
the friendly God. Is he less of a feeling friend than 
man? Do our betrayals of him bring no sorrow to the 
infinite Spirit, and do our loyalties bring no joy? Were 
the prophets right when they described a grieving 
God? And was the apostle speaking truth in the ex- 
hortation, “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God?” If 
we have a friend that sticketh closer than a brother, 
and if that wondrous Friend is denied by our conduct 
and wounded by our indifference, have we not a motive 
in him for our renewed friendship? And does he not 
have in his heart a holy eagerness that expresses itself 
in a constant pressure upon our hearts, as if He said, 
“Behold I stand, and knock, and wait—for the open 
door?” Who can fail to believe that the even partial 
realization of this truth would bring to our land and 
to all lands the most piercing evangelism and the 


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mightiest revival in all the history of the kingdom of 
God? And who ean fail to believe, also, that the in- 
difference of men cannot be overcome until men are 
made aware that with God there is no indifference: and 
that the prophet’s picture of him is forever true—as of 
one bending out of infinite and tender yearning to give 
the assurance that is itself an invitation, “I, even I, 
am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine 
own sake?” 


Vv 


The conception only gains in power when we carry 
it forward into the New Testament and find the pages 
of the later covenant sprinkled with the parental name 
of God. If a friend cannot be indifferent over a 
friend’s relation to himself, how much less can a father 
be indifferent to a son’s relation to himself? Perhaps 
we need a changed emphasis in interpreting the par- 
able of the prodigal son. Surely the wayward boy, 
though recovered from villainy, is not the hero of the 
story. On the contrary, the father is the pathetic and 
glorious principal in the account. If he is the final 
rejoicer, he is also the long sufferer. In the back- 
ground we catch the sense of wakeful nights, and of 
lights trimmed with a pitiful care, and of eager look- 
ings down the road that sloped toward the far country: 
and, at last, of the rewarded love of patient father- 
hood. Without possible question in the theology of 
Jesus the prodigal’s father stands for God, and the 
more so because in welcoming his returning son, he 
could have used without change Isaiah’s great words, 
“TI, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions 
for mine own sake.” 

[ 160 ] 


For God’s Sake 

All homes that know not the grief of childlessness 
will offer the commentaries on this high doctrine. 
Good parents do not feel peace when their children 
are estranged or rebellious. Here is an intimate ex- 
perience that has had its million counterparts: The 
tiny mutiny of the child goes so far that, for his sake, 
something must be done. Punishment that is vigor- 
ous, but not brutal, is given, and the wee rebel is car- 
ried to his early bed and is left there weeping and un- 
reconciled. We go to sit by the hearthstone and to 
read the evening paper, only to find that the tragedy 
of the home has for our spirits larger headlines than 
the tragic tales of the daily press!) We wonder if we 
went too far with penalty; directly we think, “What a 
terrible thing it would be if he died tonight!” So we 
go quietly up the stairway, hearken at the bedroom 
door, enter on tiptoe, listen over the cradle to see 
whether the “breathing is all right,’ note the farewell 
sob in the little sleeper’s throat, and bend to kiss the 
slumberer’s face. Why that drama? Is it all for the 
child? Perhaps he may never know that he had a 
caller when he was unconscious! Nay, nay! Not for 
the child alone do we go. We are soothing our own 
hearts, driving away our own insomnia, searching for 
our own peace, and entering into such partnership 
with the prophet’s God, and Jesus’ God, that we could 
adopt his very words and whisper them to our own 
beloved, “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy trans- 
gressions for mine own sake.” 


VI 
The truth has its terrible side, of warning and pre- 
venting. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
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speaks about those who “crucify to themselves the 
Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.” 
He is not speaking of an ancient event, of a Calvary 
in a distant land and a distant century. It is rather 
the Golgotha of today, the cross of this hour, the 
thorns and nails and spears of this moment. The 
crucifixion is not merely historic: it may be in the 
present calendar of our own souls, in an indifference 
and disobedience that just now send Christ out to the 
Place of the Skull. The Lamb, “slain from the foun- 
dation of the world,” is likewise slain in the ongoing 
of the world. The Passion is not an episode in the 
divine heart: it is rather its eternal mood. 

John Masefield gives us a vivid illustration of all 
this in “The Everlasting Mercy.” Saul Kane, with the 
money won in the prize fight, is in the place of de- 
bauchery with his lewd companions. The knock is on 
the door, and a little Quaker woman, who is ever try- 
ing to bring God’s lost children back to him, steps into 
the room. Ere Kane can say coarse things to her, she 
says an amazing thing to him: 

“Saul Kane,” she said, “when next you drink 
Do me the gentleness to think, 

That every drop of drink accurst 

Makes Christ within you die of thirst: 

That every dirty word you say 

Is one more flint upon his way, 

One more mock by where he tread, 

One more thorn upon his head, 


One more nail, and one more cross, 
All that you are is that Christ’s loss.” 


Grammar, or no grammar, it is a true theology. The 

sorrowing God, revealed in the Lord Jesus, is not the 

one-day sufferer without one City’s walls; he is the 
[ 162 ] 


For God’s Sake 


perpetual companion in the sin and sorrow of his peo- 
ple, seeking them for their sakes, and for his own. 


VII 
The truth has likewise its glorious side, being a savor 

of life unto life, and offermg the chance of sowing to 
the spirit unto life everlasting. One song came to us 
out of the Moody and Sankey period and bore a lesson 
so scriptural and true that it deserves a place in the 
Christian hymnody. “The Ninety and Nine’ gives us 
the picture of the Good Shepherd seeking for the lost 
sheep—the Shepherd with the troubled heart until he 
finds his own; the Shepherd of the long and atoning 
search; the Shepherd whose spirit is not at rest until 
the drama of salvation comes to its finale— 

And all through the mountains thunder-riven, 

And up from the rocky steep, 

There arose a cry to the gates of heaven, 

“Rejoice, I have found my sheep.” 

And the angels echoed around the throne, 

“Rejoice, for the Lord brings back his own!” 


Who is the Good Shepherd? None other than the 
yearning God of whom Jesus told us! The emphasis 
in the parable is not on the wayward sheep; it is on - 
the seeking Shepherd. And the description tells us - 
not at all of the peaceful security of the lost when laid 
on the kindly shoulders or placed within the protec- 
tion of the fold; but it does tell us of the Shepherd’s 
glad heart, and crowds the words of joy into the story 
of the divine search. The Shepherd goes out for the 
lost sheep’s sake, and for his own; and the Shepherd 
is God. 

Here do we gain a new and reverent meaning for a 

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phrase so often used flippantly—“For God’s sake!” 
We toss it from our lips with a carelessness that ap- 
proaches profanity. How readily may that profanity 
be turned into prayer! “For God’s sake’—what a 
slogan for all souls! What a prohibition of wicked- 
ness! What a persuasion to righteousness! Tell the 
world that the Friend and Father revealed in Jesus 
Christ is not a frigid being scarcely deserving the per- 
sonal name. Tell it that we deal ever with a sensitive 
God who broods over his children and waits for the 
sorrow or the joy that they bring to him. This truth 
about God will work like a veritable regeneration, put- 
ting the upper pressure upon our lives and adding the 
infinite motive to all our finite motives until all are 
gathered up unto him who is God over all, blessed for- 
evermore. Especially shall we proclaim to the sin- 
ning everywhere that the God of the prophet is still 
fully revealed in his Son, our Savior, and that in Jesus 
Christ we catch the message with still more heavenly 
accent, “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy trans- 
gressions for mine own sake.” 


[ 164 ] 


CHARLES EDWARD JEFFERSON 


To be for twenty-seven years pastor of a church on 
Broadway, New York, in the midst of the bright lights of 
theatres and commercial advertisements—tokens of the 
secularity and pleasure madness of our generation—and to 
have preached a simple gospel of reality without executing 
a single stroke of sensationalism for the purpose of catch- 
ing the attention of itching ears, and to have succeeded, 
actually succeeded, from whatever point of view success 
may be estimated—institutional, numerical, spiritual— 
makes the ministry of Dr. Jefferson at Broadway Taber- 
nacle a monumental thing. It stands as a rebuke to all 
who cheapen the gospel with methods alien to the gospel 
itself, and as a demonstration that a ehurch which keeps 
itself churchly can actually function in the most extreme 
tests of modern life. There is no word that better describes 
Dr. Jefferson’s pulpit ministry than to call it an honest 
ministry. Steadfastly he has eschewed all meretricious 
and false appeals, both in the subject matter of his sermons 
and in his manner of preaching. He preaches as a man 
might talk to his friend. It is straightforward, honest 
dealing with life, unstrained, undecorated, realistic in the 
good sense. 

Dr. Jefferson was born in Ohio in 1860, was graduated 
from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1882, was superintend- 
ent of public schools in Worthington, Ohio, for two years, 
and went to Boston to study law. Hearing Phillips Brooks, 
he was drawn into the Christian ministry and received his 
S.T.B. degree at Boston University in 1887, becoming at 
once pastor of Central Congregational Church, Chelsea, 
Massachusetts, where he remained for eleven years. In 


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1898 he was called to the pulpit of Broadway Tabernacle, 
New York, and began a ministry which was crowned in a 
few years with the great new building in a new location, 
at Fifty-sixth Street but still on Broadway. His influence 
has been as profound far beyond his parish as within it. 
Particularly has he left the impression of his mind, his 
insight into spiritual reality, and his homiletic method upon 
his brethren in the Christian ministry. His writings and 
sermons are always meaty. The early legal ambitions 
from which he was deflected by the passion to preach the 
gospel were a natural expression of a precise and orderly 
mind. This precision marks his preaching. He thinks with 
the exactitude of a highly trained jurist, but the realm in 
which his thinking moves is anything but legalistic. A 
sermon to children he makes as piquant and arresting as 
a story told by the most expert kindergartner, and it is 
always edifying to the most sophisticated adult. This is 
because he never deals with anything but reality—no forced 
fictions for the sake of getting momentary attention, but 
always genuine and honest truth. 

Dr. Jefferson’s books are on the library tables of all 
ministers and students of vital religion. Some of their 
titles, all of them familiar, are: Things Fundamental, The 
Minster as Prophet, Faith and Life, The World’s Christ- 
mas Tree, The Character of Jesus, The Building of the 
Church, The Minister as Shepherd, Christianity and Inter- 
national Peace, What the War ts Teaching Us, Old Truths 
and New Facts, Quiet Talks with the Family, Friendship 
Indispensable, The Character of Paul, The Cardinal Ideas 
of Isaiah, the last mentioned being just from the press. In 
British pulpits Dr. Jefferson has always been an eagerly 
welcomed guest. Oberlin College gave him a D.D. degree 
in 1898, as did also Union College in the same year, Yale 
in 1903, and the University of Vermont in 1921. From 
Ohio Wesleyan he received the degree of LL.D. in 1905. 


[ 166 } 


THE NEW COMMANDMENT 
By CHar es E, JEFFERSON 


“A new commandment I give unto you, that ye 
love one another; even as I have loved you, that 
ye also love one another.”—John xiii, 34. 


Everything conspires to make these words impres- 
sive. They are from the lips of the world’s greatest 
religious teacher—the man whose name is above every 
name, and who spake as no other man has ever spoken, 
and whose words will outlive the stars. He is speaking 
to his followers, the little company of men whom he 
has trained to carry on his work after he has gone. 
These men are to discipline the nations, teaching them 
to observe all the things which he had commanded. 
They are the nucleus of the church against which the 
gates of hades will never more prevail. 

He is speaking on the last night of his earthly life. 
Death is looking on. The shadow of the cross lies 
athwart his face. The time has arrived for him to go 
back to God. In the last hour, only the most mo- 
mentous subjects can be touched on. He will now 
speak the word which is cardinal and final—whisper 
the secret of power and victory. 

His language shows how deeply his own heart is 
moved. He calls these men “little children.” He had 
never called them that before. He had usually spoken 


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as a teacher or as a friend. He will now speak as a 
father. He has always been near to them. He will 
now draw nearer. He has always been affectionate, 
but his affection will now take on a parental tender- 
ness. He will speak as a father speaks to his children 
whom he is leaving to fight life’s battles in the midst 
of a cold and unsympathetic world. Having awed their 
hearts by his looks and manner, he is now ready to 
bring his teaching to its climax: “A new command- 
ment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even 
as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By 
this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye 
have love one to another.” 


I 


No more important words are recorded in the Gos- 
pels. The disciple who wrote them came to prize them 
more and more highly as he grew in grace and in the 
knowledge of Jesus Christ his Savior. At last the 
whole message of Jesus summed itself up for this dis- 
ciple in the new commandment. In his commentary 
on Paul’s letter to the Galatians, St. Jerome reports a 
tradition current in his day, that when John, the be- 
loved disciple, was very old and unable to walk, and 
was carried before the congregation in Ephesus, he 
was wont to repeat again and again the words of 
Jesus, “Little children, love one another.’ When 
asked why he said this so many times, his reply was, 
“It is the Lord’s commandment, and if it only be ful- 
filled, it 1s enough.” It is noteworthy that the man 
who came the nearest to Jesus’ heart, came to feel that 
the new commandment was Jesus’ crowning word. 
John could never forget the Master’s words—“By this 

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The New Commandment 


9 


shall all men know.” The disciples’ love for one an- 
other is the badge of Christian discipleship, the crown- 
ing proof that men belong to Jesus. Jesus in his clos- 
ing hour talks like a king. He does not give sugges- 
tions. He announces a law. Obedience to this law is 
the test of loyalty. It is the sole sufficient evidence 
of the divine origin of the Christian religion. It is the 
only orthodoxy recognized in heaven. 

The tragedy of Christian history is that the new 
commandment has been continuously neglected. Mil- 
lions of Christians have lived and died without know- 
ing that there is a new commandment. The average 
congregation of today is largely indifferent to it. The 
ordinary church member does not keep this command- 
ment in the front of his mind. When Christians con- 
fess their sins, they do not confess the sin of breaking 
the new commandment. When they cry to God for 
help, they do not ask for grace to keep the new com- 
mandment. In a long ministry, I have never found a 
single applicant for church membership worried about 
his inability to keep the new commandment. I have 
found men and women hesitant to join the church be- 
cause they could not give enough money, or because 
they could not attend certain meetings, or because 
they could not engage in church work, or because they 
could not pray in public, or because they did not be- 
lieve in the deity of Jesus, or in the virgin birth, or in 
the resurrection of the body, or in the vicarious atone- 
ment, or in verbal inspiration, or in the miracles, or 
in everlasting punishment, but I have never found any 
one who held back from confessing Christ because of 
his fear that he might not be able to keep the new 
commandment. So far as I have been able to see, the 

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new commandment is not in all the thoughts of thou- 
sands who are reared in Christian homes. Young 
people do not include it in the list of things which 
they must do. They do not feel its divine authority. 
Older people do not meditate upon it day and night. 
They do not measure their fitness to become members 
of the Christian church by their willingness to obey 
this new commandment. Every one knows the ten 
commandments. Many know the two commandments 
commended by our Lord. Alas, the new command- 
ment lies in the shadow. 


II 

Here is a phenomenon worth thinking about. Why 
is the new commandment so persistently ignored? The 
answer is that ministers of the gospel do not press it 
upon the attention of their people. They do not often 
preach about it. Other subjects have prior claims 
upon their time and thought. I have recently looked 
through two hundred volumes of modern sermons, and 
have found only one sermon on the new command- 
ment, and that one was preached by a preacher who 
has been dead over seventy years. Why do preachers 
overlook the new commandment? Is it not because 
the theologians overlook it? The theologians have 
never been interested in this commandment. The 
Christian scholars most revered, have never taken time 
to explore the meaning of it. The theologians have 
busied themselves with the doctrines stated in the his- 
toric creeds, and the historic creeds know nothing of 
the new commandment. No congregations have been 
trained in any land to repeat Sunday after Sunday, 
“T believe in the new commandment. I believe in loy- 


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The New Commandment 


ing my fellow Christians, even as Christ has loved us.” 
If the church through nineteen hundred years had only 
kept this commandment at the forefront of its teach- 
ing, what a different world we should have today. 

Has not the time arrived when we ought to make a 
serious effort to understand it? It is not easily un- 
derstood. One has only to turn the pages of the old 
commentaries to see how the ablest Christian scholars 
have again and again fumbled and blundered. Many 
of them have only understood it in part. Others have 
missed its meaning altogether. The verbal structure 
of the sentence is unfortunate. By placing a semicolon 
after “another,” the sentence is broken in two, and the 
expression, “Even as I have loved you,” seems to be 
an afterthought, something negligible added after the 
main thing has been said. It is better to read the sen- 
tence without punctuation marks at all. Fortunately 
punctuation marks are not an integral part of the New 
Testament. They are the invention of men who, by 
their works, have given indubitable evidence that they 
were not inspired. 


lil - 


Another difficulty lies in the ambiguity of the word 
“love.” “Love” is one of the most indefinite and baf- 
fling of all our words. Love is sometimes a passion, 
sometimes an affection, sometimes a sentiment, some- 
times a charity, sometimes a philanthropy, but love on 
the lips of Jesus was something different from all these. 
Fortunately for us, he did not attempt to define love. 
He illustrated it. By drawing a picture of it, he made 
it possible for us to see what it is. He never left men 
at critical points to grope in the dark. When he told 


eeeraly 


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the scribe that he should love his neighbor as himself, 
he at once drew a picture of what he meant. The 
scribe saw the point at once, and so does everybody 
else. We all understand pictures. When Jesus com- 
mands his disciples to love one another, he does not 
leave them in darkness. He hangs up a lamp above 
the commandment, in the light of which they can read 
his idea. They are to love one another as he has loved 
them. To the scribe he gave a picture of a fictitious 
person. To the twelve he gave the portrait of him- 
self. Nothing but his own self was adequate to ex- 
plain the meaning of love. His conduct was the only 
sufficient interpretation of that great word. His career 
alone threw light into the fathomless depths of its 
meaning. Christians are to love one another after the 
style of Jesus. 

Many Bible students have stumbled over the word 
“new.” One commentator translates it “illustrious,” 
another one “ever new,” still another “the renewed,” 
another “renewing,” another “unexpected,” another 
“last.” Many commentators try to prove that the new 
commandment is really old. If that be the case, why 
did Jesus call it new? It is old, of course, if it means 
nothing more than the commandment recorded in 
Leviticus, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” 
but that is not the commandment which Jesus gave to 
his disciples on the last night. The commandment in 
Leviticus is a general commandment; it was intended 
for Israel. Our Lord makes it wide as mankind. But 
the new commandment is quite different. It is not for 
the world; it is for disciples—for professing Christians 
—for members of the Christian church. We lose the 
meaning of it when we make it general. It is a special 

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The New Commandment 


love for a limited set of people which our Lord has in 
his mind. We are ultimately to love the whole world, 
but we must begin by loving our fellow Christians. 
We are to learn to love all humanity by loving the 
members of the Christian family. Loving is a fine art, 
the most difficult of all the arts, and we are to master 
the art in the school of Christ. The whole human race 
is to be made a brotherhood, and we are to begin the 
stupendous work by making the church a brother- 
hood. The followers of Jesus must first be brothers 
to one another if other men are to become brothers 
also. 


IV 


This, then, is indeed a new commandment. Never 
before had there been known a commandment like 
this. Never before had there been upon earth a society 
of men whose business it was to love one another be- 
cause they were bound to Jesus Christ. Their bond to 
Jesus Christ created a new bond between them. They 
were knit together because they were knit first to him. 
A new standard of love was now set up—loving after 
the manner of Jesus. What patience, forbearance, for- 
giveness, long-suffering, generosity, devotion and sac- 
rifice this love involves! Love on the lips of Jesus is 
a greater word than the world had ever spoken. Chris- 
tians are to love more than others. We are to love one 
another after the fashion of the Son of God. This is 
the only kind of love which will save the world. Lov- 
ing one’s neighbor after the fashion of the Good Sa- 
maritan will not save it, nor will the love commanded 
in the golden rule. It is only the love prescribed in 
the new commandment which will make a dent in the 

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hard heart of the world. It is this exalted and purified 
love practiced by Christians toward one another, which 
is to bring a lost world to God. 

How far we have wandered from the viewpoint of 
Jesus is shown by the customs and conventions of 
Christendom. Our churches are commonly measured 
by numbers or by wealth or by prestige. Sometimes 
they are measured by sacraments, or by clerical orders, 
or by creeds. Men speak of the “true” church, and of 
“a valid ministry” and of “orthodoxy” without any 
reference to the new commandment. How strange 
that a,.church should imagine itself to be the true 
church while it excommunicates and ostracizes mil- 
lions of the followers of Jesus, even refusing to pray 
with them. How pathetic that a church should bend 
its energies to persuade men to accept a certain form 
of church government, instead of manifesting to all the 
followers of Jesus the love which he himself showed to’ 
all his disciples—the love of fellowship and co-opera- 
tion! 

What folly to discuss the definitions of the creeds 
when we are indifferent to the only article in the creed 
which is fundamental, “Love one another after the 
fashion of Christ.” The discussions about orders and 
sacraments are bootless so long as we do not endeavor 
to keep the new commandment. How can we hope to 
convince the world that our religion comes from 
heaven if we refuse to obey the supreme law imposed 
upon us by our Master? The Savior of the world 
did not place the primary emphasis upon forms of 
worship, or upon sacraments, or upon clerical orders, 
or upon church government, or upon creeds. These 
are not the notes of the true church. There is only one 

[174] 


The New Commandment 


note of the true church, and that is the love of Chris- 
tians for one another after the fashion of Christ. It 
is not by celebrating the Lord’s supper, or by the reci- 
tation of a creed, or by obedience to an ecclesiastical 
superior, that we show we are disciples in the school of 
Christ. It is only by our love for one another that we 
give evidence that we belong to him. We are his 
friends only as we keep his commandments, and his 
greatest commandment to his followers is, ‘Love one 
another as I have loved you.” 


V 

It is because of our neglect of the new command- 
ment that we find ourselves face to face with problems 
which are insoluble, and with tasks which are beyond 
our strength. The world is full of idealism. Men are 
dreaming everywhere of brotherhood and reunion and 
co-operation and peace, but up to the present hour all 
suggested schemes have broken down. All dreams 
have failed of fulfillment. We see what ought to be, 
but we cannot bring it to pass. For instance, we can- 
not bring the nations together. We cannot induce 
them to lay down their arms. We cannot do this be- 
cause we cannot bring the churches together. If all 
Christians were together, the time would be within 
sight when nations would learn war no more. 

We cannot bring the great branches of the church 
together, because Christians have not been brought 
close enough together in the local congregation. It is 
in the local congregation that the primary and all- 
important work is to be initiated. It is here that 
Christians are to be taught the art of loving one an- 
other after the manner of Jesus. It is here that they 


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are to be trained to love one another across social lines, 
and economic lines, and cultural lines, and racial lines. 
Every church is to be a melting pot in which hetero- 
- geneous human elements are to be fused. It is in the 
local church that the heart is to be broadened and 
sweetened. It is here that broader breadths of love 
than those created in the home must be woven. It is 
in the church that all sorts and conditions of men are 
to meet and mingle and learn how to live and work 
together in love. The spirit of sympathy and good 
will and co-operation developed in the local church 
will overflow into wider fields, and little by little sepa- 
rated groups of the Lord’s followers will come into fel- 
lowship with one another, and work together to ad- 
vance the kingdom of love. 

Most of the work done for the reunion of Christen- 
dom has been expended at the wrong poin ~ have 
looked to the ecclesiastical leaders to show i —_—_ ay, 
and they have invariably begun with ceremonies and 
sacraments and creeds, but there is no progress pos- 
sible in that direction until a preliminary work has 
been accomplished. Church union will come about 
through love, and this love has not yet been born in 
the hearts of the masses of Christians. Even mem- 
bers of the local congregations do not in many cases 
love one another. In multitudes of cases they do not 
even know one another, and what is worse, they do not 
want to know one another. The result is we have 
many pagan hearts worshiping in Christian temples. 
We have a host of professed disciples who have no re- 
gard for the new commandment. Loving their fellow 
church members is not a vital factor in their conduct. 
But the Christian church, if it be a church after the 

[ 176 ] 


The New Commandment 


mind of Christ, is a band of lovers, a brotherhood, a 
family, in whose life the heart is trained to come close 
to other hearts. This is insisted on by all the New 
Testament writers. 


vi 


What the world most needs is the spirit of friendli- 
ness. It is full of rancor and strife and bitterness. It 
needs a fountain flowing love. That is what every 
Christian church should be. One often hears voices 
clamoring for applied Christianity. There are many 
who cannot understand why Christianity 1s not more 
widely applied. The explanation is that the stock of 
Christianity is low. There is not enough of it to go 
around. We cannot apply what has not yet been cre- 
ated. We cannot impart a friendliness we do not pos- 
sess, YT as rich in members and in money, but we 
are. .{ sp love. The world is waiting for a great 
society oi Prien and women who will love across all 
dividing social, political, ecclesiastical, and racial lines. 
The church must give itself to its one supreme task— 
that of developing a more loving type of human being. 

The average Christian is not pre-eminent in love. 
The virulence and bitterness of doctrinal controversies 
among Christians are proof that a large part of cur- 
rent Christianity 1s formalism, and that hearts may 
boast of allegiance to Jesus and still remain untouched 
by his spirit. A theological controversy sometimes 
lights up as by a flash of lightning the whole moral 
situation. We suddenly discover that instead of being 
rich, we are wretched and miserable and poor and blind 
and naked. 

Since the various branches of the universal church 


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have trained their communicants only half-heartedly 
and imperfectly to love one another, it is not surprising 
that these various communions find it difficult or im- 
possible to work in harmony together. The type of 
character built up in the modern church is not one 
which the spirit of friendliness can readily use in co- 
operative enterprises for the common good. In num- 
berless communities the different denominations hold 
aloof from one another, often envying one another, 
sometimes slandering one another, and finding it diffi- 
cult even to exercise what is known as “church com- 
ity.” It is because of this lack of fellowship that the 
spiritual life languishes, and that dispositions grow 
rank which the religion of Jesus is expected to kill. It 
is because of this division of the army of the Lord 
that so many battles are lost. 


Vil 


It is an appalling fact that it seems easier for anar- 
chists and socialists and communists and agnostics 
and skeptics and atheists to co-operate than for Ro- 
man Catholics and Greek Catholics and Protestants to 
work together for the extension of the kingdom of 
good will. It is because Protestants are not taught 
from their cradle to think kindly of the Roman Catho- 
lic church, and because Roman Catholics are not in- 
structed from babyhood to have friendly feelings to- 
ward Protestant churches, that the union in worship 
and work of these two great bodies of Christians is 
relegated by the prophets to a future incalculably far 
off. Neither the Protestant nor the Roman church is 
orthodox. They are both heretical on the supreme 
Christian doctrine. We do not love after the fashion 

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The New Commandment 


of Christ, nor do we try to do so. We are content to 
battle valiantly for what we call the truth, forgetting 
that the supreme truth is love. No truth is worth 
having which is bought by the surrender of love. 
Christ was a friend, a brother, a fellow-worker. 

We Roman Catholics and Greek Catholics and Pro- 
testants, Presbyterians and Methodists, Baptists and 
Lutherans, Episcopalians and Congregationalists, Uni- 
tarians and Quakers, and all the rest of us, no matter 
what our name, must be friends, comrades, brothers 
and fellow-workers. It is not necessary that we use 
the same forms of worship, or the same forms of gov- 
ernment, or the same forms of theological opinion, but 
it is indispensable that we be friends, comrades, broth- 
ers and fellow-workers. We must trust one another, 
and help one another, and sacrifice for one another. 
That much is certain. If we are not willing to fight 
side by side on the great battlefield against falsehood 
and wrong or to work side by side in the same vine- 
yard for the cultivation of the same fruits of the spirit, 
or to combine our forces in the same town for the pull- 
ing down of the strongholds of evil, we present to the 
world a spectacle which is a scandal. 


VUI 
We need to take lessons from our Lord and Savior, 
and also from the apostle Paul, who knew the Master’s 
mind as few have ever known it. To Paul the church 
is a temple. In the temple all the stones are fitted to- 
gether and one stone supports another. To Paul the 
church is a body, the body of Christ. In that body 
every member is knit to every other member by vital 
bonds. Every joint—or as we would say, every social 

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contact—contributes to the vital force by means of 
which the whole body is built up. To Paul the church 
is a family, and all the followers of Jesus are brothers 
and sisters, living their life under the law of love. 

Let the pope and the patriarchs and the cardinals 
and the archbishops and the bishops and the ministers 
and the priests and the elders and deacons, all set 
themselves to the work of finding out what Christian 
love really is. Why leave that word vague when it is 
the keystone of the Christian arch? Why ignore, “As 
I have loved you,’ when such love is the test of dis- 
cipleship and the proof of the divinity of our religion? 
If every Christian pulpit throughout the world should 
once a month in every year expound and glorify the 
principle of life set forth m the New Commandment, 
these sermons would be so many leaves from the tree 
of life for the healing of the nations. 

“Love one another as I have loved you.” This is the 
passionate desire of our Lord. It is his deepest desire. 
It was his dominant longing in the last hour of his 
hfe m the flesh, and it is his dominant longing still. 
He is the same yesterday, today and forever. His last 
word in the upper chamber was not an exhortation or 
a command, but a prayer. Before starting for the gar- 
den of Gethsemane he poured out his heart unto God. 
In this prayer there was one supreme and often re- 
peated petition, “That they all may be one even as we 
are one.” In his prayer as in his conversation, he was 
still dwelling on the conviction that the one and only 
way in which the world can be persuaded that God 
has indeed sent his Son, is the spectacle of his follow- 
ers loving one another. His prayer was not for the 
entire human race. It was for the men who were with 


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The New Commandment 


him in that room, and also for the innumerable com- 
pany who should believe on his name. He prayed, 
therefore, for us, and his prayer is now, as it was then, 
“That they may be perfected into one,” for only as we 
are perfected into one will it be possible for us to be 
with him where he is and behold his glory. 


[181] 


ae 


{ 





Francis JouN McConneEtu 


Many who look upon our American ecclesiastical life 
with thoughtful eyes wish that our great Methodist Church 
had some recognized alternative honor which it could be- 
stow upon its outstanding leaders besides making bishops 
of them. Such observers look with misgiving upon the like- 
lihood that this or that great teacher or preacher who has 
arisen to a place of commanding influence will be seized by 
force of his brethren’s affection and thrust into the bishop’s 
chair at the next quadrennial conference. It has come to 
be a kind of proverb that the spirit of a prophet and that 
of a bishop do not go well together; the chances being 
that the functions and considerations belonging to the office 
of the bishop will smother the spirit of the prophet. What- 
-ever ground exists for this foreboding, there are surely 
shining exceptions enough to prove that it is the stuff in 
the man, rather than the tradition of the office, which is 
determinative of the final result. In Bishop McConnell we 
have a singular convincing example of such an exception. 
He is a fearless and unshackled prophet, and has become a 
sort of Isaiah’s rock under whose shadow many a lesser 
prophet finds refuge and renewal of courage. Instead of 
losing his prophetic function in the narrowing limitations 
of denominational administration, he turns his great office 
to account as an asset and instrument of the higher min- 
istry which he carries on in the interest of essential and 
catholic Christianity. 

Bishop McConnell was born in Ohio in 1871. He was 
eraduated from Ohio Wesleyan in 1894, and took his 
theological course in Boston University, where he received 
the Degree of Ph.D. in 1899. While studying in Boston 
he preached at Chelmsford, Mass., and Newton Upper 


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Falls, Mass. He accepted the pastorate at Ipswich, Mass., 
in 1899, and the Harvard Street Methodist Church in Cam- 
bridge, Mass., in 1902, where he remained only two years, 
when he accepted a call to the New York Avenue Metho- 
dist Church, Brooklyn, New York. After six years there, 
De Pauw University called him as president. By this time 
fame and denominational affection decreed that he should 
be a bishop, and at the general conference of 1912 he was 
elected to that high office: He was assigned to the mission 
field of Mexico. There he flung himself into the task of 
getting on terms of understanding with the Mexican people, 
their oppressions, their aspirations, and the way of helpful 
approach to their hearts and their social needs. As an 
interpreter of Mexico—and, indeed, of all Latin America 
—to the American people, his testimony and counsel have 
been drawn upon by our highest authorities in the succession 
of crises which our relations with our neighbors to the south 
have experienced. 

Bishop McConnell’s part as chairman of the Commission 
of the Interchurch World Movement, whose specific task 
was to investigate the conditions prevalent in the steel 
industry, brought him and his coadjutors much criticism. 
But recent reforms in the industry have confirmed not only 
the justice of the commission’s diagnosis but the practic- 
ability of its proposed remedies. Bishop McConnell’s books 
have greatly enriched the life of the church in respect of . 
personal religion, the philosophy of faith, and the social 
application of the gospel. His leading titles are: The Divine 
Immanence, Religious Certainty, Personal Christianity, 
Democratic Christianity, Public Opinion and Theology, 
The Preacher and the People, Is God Limited? Ohio Wes- 
leyan gave him the D.D. degree, and both Hanover College 
and Wesleyan University gave him the LL.D. degree. His 
episcopal area centers in Pittsburgh, Pa. 


[ 184 ] 


PETER THE ROCK 
By Francis J. McConngELL 


“—__thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will 
build my church.” 


These words of our Lord to Peter probably have been 
as much debated about as any passage in the New Tes- 
tament. Almost all who comment on the commission 
to Peter are agreed at one point—they seem to feel 
that the words could not have referred to Peter as he 
then was. Jesus was thinking of Peter after he became 
hardened by trial into rock—not the unsteady disciple 
who was yet to betray his Master. Or Jesus was 
building his church not upon Peter, but upon Peter’s 
confession, ‘Thou art the Christ.” Or Jesus was look- 
ing forward to Pentecost, which would make Peter 
over from a man of sand into aman of rock. Even the 
Roman Catholic student will at times insist that Peter 
was chosen as the foundation-stone of the church not 
because of any special fitness in Peter himself, but 
because of self-sufficient arbitrary decree—the weak- 
ness of Peter being supplemented by miraculous aid. 

In reading the scriptures it may be just as well to 
take passages in their obvious, first-glance meaning. 
If the obvious meaning does not make sense we are, of 
course, at liberty to search for more recondite interpre- 
tation. It seems to me that the surface meaning of the 
passage does make sense, that our Lord’s words to 
Peter mean Peter, just as he was. Not that Peter was 

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not to become stronger and better with the years, but 
that Peter, whose only extraordinariness consisted in 
his being extraordinarily like the ordinary man, was a 
type of that common human strength, and human 
frailty, of which any founder of a church must take 
account. Any human organization must at least start 
from humanity as we find it. Any democracy, which 
is to endure at all, must begin with men as they actu- 
ally are. 

Peter asked foolish questions, committed his Master 
to action in reckless ways, at critical moments blun- 
dered most sadly. Yet the noticeable fact is that Peter 
never asked Jesus a foolish question without getting a 
wise answer, never committed his Master to a course 
without throwing a light on the pathway which others 
must tread. There is hardly any disciple of Jesus 
today but who at times feels himself to be more like 
Peter than like any of the twelve. 

I am thinking of Peter as a representative man, as 
George Matheson would say, a man who represents 
possibly the largest group of Christians, a man wholly 
devoted to his Leader and yet stumbling and blun- 
dering along, not into the darkness but into the light. 
Those of us in whom there is enough of the boy left to 
read and re-read Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure 
Island” with delight will recall that the boy in that 
story is always doing the thing that he has been told 
not to do, and yet by his heedlessness is always getting 
the party of adventurers, not into scrapes but out of 
them. Perhaps that is the aim of the story, if it has 
any aim besides the sheer giving of pleasure, to show 
that a boy’s impulse may be better than a man’s wis- 
dom. There is a good deal of the boy in Peter, at least 


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a good deal that is well intentioned but heedless and 
impulsive. Jesus never showed his understanding of 
the human mind and heart more unmistakably than in 
his dealing with this headlong disciple. 


I 

First of all, Peter never asked a foolish question but 
that Jesus gave him a wise answer. Take the scene at 
the transfiguration. Peter is greatly impressed at the 
vision of Moses and of Elias and of his transfigured 
Lord. He unselfishly suggests that booths be built for 
Jesus and Elias and Moses, with the comment: “It is 
good to be here.” The writer of the gospel, in the light 
of the after-years, saw that this comment was not 
appropriate and apologized for Peter. Peter, it ap- 
pears, was sore afraid and wist not what to say. He 
belonged to that rather numerous class of persons who, 
when they do not know what to say, say it. I am 
glad he did. He said about what I would have said, 
if I had been there, or rather what I would have 
thought without daring to say it. It must never be 
forgotten that in Peter’s speech the thoughts of many 
hearts were revealed—for the sufficient reason that 
Peter spoke out what many others were thinking, but 
did not dare to say. 

Now as to Peter’s suggestion about the booths for a 
long stay on the mount of transfiguration. Peter here 
has stumbled upon a problem which men have been 
debating from his day to ours. Just last week I read 
through Professor Charles A. Bennett’s Philosophie 
Study of Mysticism, the best discussion of that theme, 
by the way, that I have ever seen. Professor Bennett 
brings out clearly the puzzling contradiction between 

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the duty of holding fast an experience which is su- 
premely worth while on its own account, and the duty 
of leaving the experience, so to speak, for the task of 
winning others to experience of the divine. That was 
Peter’s problem. Peter instinctively felt that such an 
experience as that of the mount of transfiguration was 
good on its own account. The hearts of multitudes 
might have been perplexed to the end of time if Jesus 
had not answered the suggestion of Peter by starting 
forthwith to minister to the needs of men at the foot 
of the mount. 

Consider another question of Peter, the query as to 
how many times he should forgive an offending 
brother. Until seven times? How wildly Peter missed 
the point, we say. The Lord’s reply, “Until seventy 
times seven,’ makes it clear that the mere number of 
times we forgive has nothing to do with the real duty, 
which is that of an inexhaustible spirit of forgiveness. 
Jesus did not mean that forgiveness was to be ex- 
hausted even with the four hundred and ninetieth 
pardon. Peter ought to have seen this without asking 
a foolish question. Ought he? If we are tempted to 
think severely of Peter’s folly in asking such a ques- 
tion, let us reflect that it was Peter’s folly which led 
to the Master’s perfect answer. Let us remember also 
that Peter’s suggestion of seven was generous. Out- 
side of parents dealing with erring sons not one human 
being in ten thousand ever forgives the same offender 
seven times. | 

One other question, that question in Matthew, nine- 
teenth chapter and twenty-seventh verse: “Then an- 
swered Peter and said unto him, lo, we have left all 
and followed thee: what then shall we have?” We 


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Peter the Rock 


feel like hanging our heads in shame over this, but 
before we blame Peter let us see if we do not properly 
belong at his side as he speaks so outrageously. Then 
answered Peter. The “then” refers back to the inci- 
dent of the rich young ruler and the Master’s comment 
on that incident. Let us be honest with ourselves. Is 
not that incident of the Master’s dealing with the rich 
young ruler a hard enigma? The young man was 
morally excellent, well reared, lovable, eager to be a 
disciple. Why shut the door in his face just because he 
had money? Above all, why speak of the possession of 
money as a lack, or deficiency? If that incident were 
to recur today I would feel like saying to my fellow- 
Methodists: “We must deal tactfully with this young 
man. He comes from among our best people. Pos- 
sibly he is not quite ready for full membership with 
us, but one as earnest as he will not object to coming 
in and remaining ‘for a season’ on probation. Even if 
he never comes into full membership he is nevertheless 
eligible, by our book of discipline, to a position on our 
board of trustees.” 

If, after I had pleaded thus, I were to hear the blunt 
answer: “It is easier for a camel to go through a 
needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter into the 
kingdom of God,” I would probably have asked, or 
have whispered to Peter to ask: “Who then shall be 
saved?” “Lo, we have left all and have followed thee, 
what then shall we have?” Peter’s ill-mannered, pre- 
sumptuous, indelicate question forced a crisis, led to a 
facing of a situation which might not otherwise have 
been so squarely met. The question, indelicate or not, 
is one that we repeatedly find skulking about in half- 
consciousness. Peter’s question brought out into the 


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open a doctrine of spiritual ownership which is one of 
the great contributions of Jesus to the world’s religious 
treasures. 


If 


I have spoken of Peter as given to forcing his Mas- 
ter to action by ill-considered statements or requests 
on his own account. I do not wish here to raise any 
questions concerning miracles but, whatever our in- 
terpretation of miracles, the fact remains that wher- 
ever Peter’s conduct is described in connection with a 
miraculous incident that conduct is perfectly consist- 
ent with the total picture of Peter. The collectors 
seek tribute for the temple, and ask Peter if Jesus will 
contribute. Peter evidently has not thought about it, 
and so he says yes. According to the narrative a 
miracle by Jesus makes good the word of Peter. Peter 
hears Jesus call across the stormy waters of the lake 
and asks permission to come to him. The permission 
is granted, involving miracle. Peter takes it into his 
own head and hands to defend Jesus after the arrest 
in the Garden, making necessary a miraculous healing 
by Jesus. 

Miracles to one side, however, the history of the 
early church in part turns around the extent to which 
Peter ran on ahead into policies about which he had 
not thought carefully, but which the divine spirit sanc- 
tioned with success. Paul is given credit for the ad- 
vance of Christianity into the Gentile world and Paul 
is entitled to credit. We must not forget, however, 
that in so radical a forward movement as that of 
preaching to the Gentiles the first steps are hardest, 
and Peter was the leader among those who took those 

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hard first steps. Of course Peter had the help of a 
dream divinely sent, the vision of the sheet full of 
beasts clean and unclean and the hearing of the voice: 
“Kill and eat.” The dream, however, seems to have 
come to Peter because he was Peter, because the 
dream answered questions he was already asking him- 
self, and because he could be counted on to follow the 
vision. In any case Peter immediately drew a far- 
reaching practical conclusion. When he went to An- 
tioch and found that, under the preaching of the risen 
Christ, men among the heathen had responded, had 
passed out of darkness into light, had left their idols 
and were worshipping the God of Christ, Peter had but 
one word: “Take them into the church.” “What 
about the old Jewish requirements?” “Never mind 
the requirements; take them in.” 

When, a little later, Peter was called to account by 
the elders at Jerusalem for not charging the Gentile 
Christians to keep the law of Moses he broke out: 
“Why make ye trial of God that ye should put a yoke 
upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fa- 
thers nor we were able to bear?” Some of the critics 
insist that Peter never could have made so extremely 
an anti-Judaistic speech as this. Such a speech has 
the stamp of Peter all over it. Suppose it is extreme 
and ill-balanced. Suppose, as a matter of fact, the 
fathers had borne the yoke for hundreds of years. 
When a great call toward spiritual freedom is sounded, 
we may well thank God that the Peters push the bet- 
ter-balanced brethren to one side. Anyhow, Peter was 
dealing with a fact-situation. He may not have seen 
far ahead, but he saw far enough to take the next step. 
He may have weakened a little later on the matter 
of full social privileges for Gentile Christians, but he 


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could not undo his own work. He had started some- 
thing that he could not stop. As for social equality 
among all classes of Christians, we of today are not in 
any position to blame Peter. 

The truth seems to be that Peter had hit upon a 
principle of ecclesiastical, or social, dealing that he had 
learned from his Lord in personal activities: He that 
doeth the will shall know of the doctrine. The path 
to individual salvation is not by endless debate. Out 
of actually doing the will of God comes the conviction 
as to the truth of God. Having seen the effects on the 
church itself of preaching the gospel to all men alike, 
Peter was not going to let a body of debating elders 
try the patience of God with a lot of wornout ecclesi- 
astical mechanism. -Peter’s speech at Jerusalem is one 
of the great charters of Christian liberty: “God gave 
to the Gentiles the Holy Spirit—even as he did to us. 
He made no distinction between us and them, cleans- 
ing their hearts by faith.” Every word of this is the 
plain man’s appeal to fact, an appeal which has arisen 
out of actual application of the gospel to Gentile 
groups. Having seen God at Antioch, Peter drew the 
sensible but radical conclusion that God was not lim- 
ited to Jerusalem. 


ITI 


This is not at all intended to be an exaltation of the 
non-intellectual factors in religious activity. Thought- 
fulness has its assured place, but the severest reflection 
must work upon what is given—upon “data,” in other 
words. Paul’s mighty achievement is sometimes in- 
terpreted as if, after seeing the vision on the Damascus 
road, Paul had retired into Arabia, had thought out the 
implications of the vision and had then proceeded to 


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Peter the Rock 


carry the gospel to the Gentiles according to set plan, 
largely conceived beforehand. This is not the exact 
historic fact. Paul worked upon “data,” part of the 
data coming from the experience of Peter. The data 
Paul so interpreted as to make the gospel move to- 
ward larger effectiveness in evangelical statement and 
appeal. Peter could never have given us the epistles 
—Galatians, Romans, Corinthians—but he created 
situations which in the long run made Paul’s theology 
necessary and inevitable. In Peter’s career we see in 
miniature the career of the church, human beings 
trusting impulses whose farther reach they do not fore- 
see, drawing back at times almost aghast at the con- 
sequences of their own deeds, at other times almost 
turning their backs on their own plans, yet never re- 
treating to the position from which they started, and 
on the whole getting ahead. 


IV 

Still, a certain type of biblical student will not let 
us forget Peter’s faults. Think of his awful betrayal 
of his Master on the night of the trial! Well, suppose 
we think of it. Peter was not the only one who at the 
supper had said: “Even if I must die with thee, yet 
will I not deny thee.’ Amazing candor marks the gos- 
pel story and the narrative frankly states: “Likewise 
also said all the disciples.’ Moreover, let us not for- 
get that at the critical moment Peter was the only one 
of the eleven near enough to Jesus to be able to do 
any betraying. The others had forsaken Jesus and had 
fled. Once more the betrayal of Peter was the be- 
trayal of weakness, of exhaustion following strenuous 
endeavor to keep close enough to the Master to be of 
some service to him. He was caught off guard at two 

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o’clock in the morning, with all his resources paid out 
and empty. He was caught in the back-wash of that 
rhythm which is a peculiarity of all human experi- 
ence. The conduct of Peter at the betrayal is a ground 
for charity in our thought of the betrayals of hosts of 
ordinary men, betrayals which come not out of insin- 
cerity or meanness or choice, but out of bodies and 
minds exhausted in an overwhelming combination of 
evil circumstances of which they for the moment can 
make nothing. As soon as the tide swings back toward 
fullness the soul returns to its Lord in genuine repent- 
ance. The vast majority of followers of the Christ can 
be depended upon, even after momentary lapse, to 
do just what Peter did. There are not many Judases. 

One other scene in the closing days of the earthly 
career of Jesus is somewhat marred by Peter, the scene 
at the lakeside after the great draught of fishes. Peter 
has just received the three-fold commission: “Feed my 
lambs. Feed my sheep. Feed my sheep.” The Mas- 
ter speaks the solemn word about Peter’s being guided 
by another and led where he would not choose to go, 
which prophesies a violent death. How splendid it 
would have been if the scene could have been closed 
with Peter kneeling in silence as the last word is 
spoken? Peter broke the silence, with the question: 
“What shall this other man do?” 

It would have been better, of course, if Peter had not 
so spoken as to receive the rebuke: “What is that to 
thee? Follow thou me!” Nevertheless, if he just had 
to speak, it is well that he asked that question, for the 
problem of the inequalities in the lot of disciples, all 
of them alike devoted to their Lord, has been a mys- 
tery from the beginning. The only answer is that 
made by Jesus to Peter, an appeal to increased faith 


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Peter the Rock 


in Jesus himself. The world might not have had that 
utterance except for Peter. 

This then was Peter, asking the wrong questions and 
getting the right answer; obeying impulses which, 
though they seemed like the whim of the moment, 
proved to be sound, practical wisdom, blundering 
grievously and yet blundering productively. Peter 
was imperfect, to be sure, but the kingdom of God does 
not rest on hard-and-fast infallibilities in men. If the 
kingdom had infallibility in men as its foundation it 
might indeed stand, but nobody would pay much at- 
tention to it. It would have to lie off the main high- 
way of the world’s life. The only kingdom that will 
help us is one founded on men like ourselves. Peter 
does not say anything the ordinary man might not 
have said—if he had dared. When Peter puts his ques- 
tions we look a little to one side, not in shame for 
Peter as much as for ourselves. We had half wished 
somebody would ask that question. When Peter starts 
on a risky course it is the course we would have taken 
—if we had dared. When Peter blunders he blunders 
much as we would blunder, and his fall keeps us out 
of his pit. Peter is in himself a sort of cross-section of 
ordinary humanity. On that type of life the kingdom 
abides. We need prophets, seers and saints, but a 
kingdom of humanity cannot rest on such alone as a 
foundation. There are not enough of them. There are 
enough Peters. In the Peters there is enough sound- 
ness, not to make a perfect kingdom, but to make one 
that will stand. The thought of Jesus concerning the 
possibilities of the Peter-type as foundation stone is 
prophetic of the permanence of the church, and, it may 
be said, of Christian society as well. 

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a 





WILuiAM FRASER McDoweE.uu 


Measured by breadth of culture, by practical wisdom, 
preaching power, length of service, and richness and ripe- 
ness of experience, Bishop McDowell holds unquestioned 
rank as the dean of Methodist bishops in America. As a 
preacher he keeps alive the classic tradition of the pulpit 
of the past generation enriched by sympathy with science 
and the culture of the present time. Dignified, not in pres- 
ence and carriage only, but in the very temper of his mind, 
he greatens with a new importance any theme or cause 
which he touches. His position in his own denomination 
and in his wider ecclesiastical relationships is best char- 
acterized by the term religious statesman. Engaged with 
large thoughts and far-reaching movements, he has drawn 
to himself responsibilities of churchmanship which only a 
calm soul, unawed by the hazards of new adventures, could 
effectually discharge. Probably there is no ecclesiastic in 
our Protestant organization in whom our various non- 
ecclesiastical movements have found such support and 
encouragement and constant counsel as in Bishop McDowell. 
He has been vitally, albeit unofficially, related to the 
Y. M. C. A. movement, giving to it the steadying and 
directive aid of his statesmanly counsel for many years. 
In the early stages of the Student Christian Movement 
he was drawn by Dr. Mott and Dr. Speer and their coad- 
jutors into the innermost circles where the character of 
that movement was fashioned. On all its programs his has 
been an ever-recurring voice. A program at Lake Geneva or 
an international Student Volunteer convention without him 
is even to this day unthinkable. In the Federal Council of 
Churches his has been a guiding spirit. Bishop McDowell 


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is the sort of man other men instinctively lean upon. Dis- 
interested, unselfish, sagacious, broadly informed, cool, and 
withal possessed of imaginative understanding, his presence 
at any cabinet table leaves no doubt as to where the head 
of that table is. 

At thirty-one, Bishop McDowell was made chancellor of 
the University of Denver. This was in 1890. In nine years 
of service he laid deep and strong the foundations of an 
institution of the highest academic rank. Born in Ohio 
in 1858, he received his college education at Ohio Wesleyan 
where he was graduated in 1879. He was graduated at 
Boston University School of Theology in 1882 and received 
Ohio Wesleyan’s Ph.D. degree in 1903. Wesleyan, Ohio 
Wesleyan, Denver, and Northwestern Universities con- 
ferred the D.D. degree upon him, and the University of 
Vermont the degree of L.H.D. Previous to 1900 he held 
three pastorates, first at Lodi, then at Oberlin, and finally 
at Tiffin, allin Ohio. He left Denver to become correspond- 
ing secretary of the Board of Education of the Methodist 
Church, where the general conference of 1904 found him 
and made him a bishop. A preacher of commanding popu- 
larity in all the colleges and universities of the country, 
Bishop McDowell has also been invited to deliver the lec- 
tures on the various special Foundations in many institu- 
tions—Cole lecturer at Vanderbilt in 1910, Lyman Beecher 
lecturer at Yale in 1917, Mendenhall lecturer at De Pauw 
in 1922, Merrick lecturer at Ohio Wesleyan in 1924. 
Assigned by his denomination to the area of which Washing- 
ton, D. C., is the “see” city, Bishop McDowell, in addition 
to his duties as bishop, has actively led the Federal Council 
of Churches in these activities which center at the nation’s 
capital. He visited India, China, the Philippines, and Japan 
in 1910-11 on an official mission for his church. Among his 
books are: In the School of Christ, A Man’s Religion, Good 
Ministers of Jesus Christ, Making a Personal Faith, This 
Mind. 


[198 ] 


THE INTERPRETATION OF LIFE 
By Wiuu1AM Fraser McDoweruu 


“And he came to Nazareth, where he had been 
brought up; and he entered, as his custom was, into 
the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up to 
read. And there was delivered unto him the book 
of the prophet, Isaiah. And he opened the book, 
and found the place where it was written: 

The spirit of the Lord is upon me, 

Because he anointed me to preach good tidings to 

the poor; 

He hath sent me to proclaim release to the cap- 

tives, 

And recovering of sight to the blind, 

To set at liberty them that are bruised, 

To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” 

—Luke iv, 18, 19. 


Horace Bushnell called the gospel a gift to the im- 
agination. He meant, in part, that the first thing to 
do with the gospel as a whole and in its parts is to see 
it clearly and vividly. The gospel is like history and 
science in this respect. It remains dead and lifeless 
until the religious imagination makes it live and move 
before our eyes. 

Coming to this event in the gospel story, through 
the gate of the imagination we see a village congrega- 
tion, made up of ordinary people, “dull and respect- 
able” as they have been called, engaged in the usual, 
formal, routine act of worship. They were devout and 
orthodox as to the past, and probably as to the future. 

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They were sure that God had been with their fathers, 
with Abraham, Moses, and Isaiah, and the others who 
had made historic Judaism illustrious. They hoped 
for great days to come in some undefined, unfixed fu- 
ture when the Messiah should appear. But they did 
not expect any mighty thing to happen in their meet- 
inghouse, at a regular service before their eyes, and 
especially to one of their neighbors’ sons. They be- 
lieved there had been a burning bush and that some 
time there might be another, but they did not expect 
it to be seen at Nazareth. “The blight of ordinari- 
ness” had fallen on them. 

Then Jesus stood up to read, possibly the lesson for 
the day. He opened the prophecy of Isaiah at one of 
the noblest passages in any literature. They had 
heard it scores of times. It had become that pathetic 
thing, “a dead letter’—a noble utterance which had 
practically ceased to be alive. It had been read in 
their hearing in a dull, meaningless way, with no em- 
phasis upon the personal terms, without causing any 
heart to throb, any pulse to quicken or any throat to 
choke. They believed it but did not see it. It was 
inspired but had ceased in their lives to be inspiring 
and living. It is so tragically easy for even a glorious 
word to go to death in the hands of men! 


JESUS READING 
As Jesus read the great, old words he opened a new 
gate by his emphasis upon the personal terms. ‘The 
spirit of the Lord is upon me. He hath anointed me, 
He hath sent me, . . . this day is this scripture ful- 
filled in your hearing.” And the words became alive 
and glowing and personal and began to move about 
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like a person before their eyes and to ring with the 
tones of life in their ears. Right there before them, in 
their ordinary services was another burning bush with 
the voice of God coming out of it as in the older day. 
They rubbed their eyes, they looked around at one an- 
other in wonder. They had not been looking for any- 
thing like this to happen in their orderly service. And 
they were so far from the spiritual condition that 
would have given them spiritual insight into and un- 
derstanding of what was happening, that they went to 
discussing Jesus’ family. They spoke well of Jesus. 
They wondered at these gracious words, but they 
added: “Is not this Joseph’s son?” Knowing his 
people they could not see how it was possible that a 
new glory of God had broken out of the skies through 
him to them. 

But whether we come to the scene by the gate of 
imagination or the gate of emphasis we come upon one 
of the finest spectacles our world has to offer, the spec- 
tacle of a person at the beginning of his career, set- 
ting its tone, defining its purpose, fixing its relations 
in such a way as to make this scene luminous for youth 
to the ends of the world and the end of time. This is 
both an event in the life of Jesus and a principle for 
human life everywhere. You would know from this 
scene what this Person would do with his life. And 
you would know also that his way with his life was 
the only way for him and for all who would live at their 
best. Jesus walks through this picture forever in the 
right way. The rich young ruler walks through his 
picture forever in the wrong way. Each episode was 
an event, each was also a principle. One was the wrong 
principle, one the right principle. The record of life 


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is forever being written. It is not a closed book. Men 
of youth are always at life’s threshold, always going 
into life as the rich young ruler did or as the Master 
of life did. Let us look at the matter in a measure of 
detail. 


I 


The first thing that strikes us as we study this scene 
is that Jesus interprets his life on the highest possible 
level. Whatever may happen to him in coming days 
he will not begin on a low level. His purposes and 
plans are not going to be conformed to a moderate 
standard. “He pitches his life high” and does not 
flinch from doing it. Even the low state of life about 
him does not cause him to hesitate, or adapt his ideals 
to his environment. He knew how men do shrink, 
how they take refuge in what is sensible, rational and 
humanly possible. ‘Let some one else go up the 
rugged steep of the mountain and see God face to 
face.” That is the story of human life. And the world 
accepts us at our own lowered estimate and our own 
moderate levels. But we men, with life before us, no 
matter what we mean to do with it, ought to be grate- 
ful every day of our lives that that one Person started 
his life off in the presence of men at the highest pos- 
sible level. He was in the sacred synagogue, sur- 
rounded by the best people, standing in the line of 
the holiest history, quoting a noble passage from the 
noblest literature in existence, with the tides of God’s 
spirit, the presence of God himself in full flood upon 
him. There could be no higher level than this. 

Under such conditions timid men shrink. They are 
afraid of their own highest emotions and impulses. 

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They “take themselves in hand.” They wait to cool 
off, to talk things over with other people “who have 
good sense,’ who are not excited, who have seen no 
visions, climbed no mountain sides, have not seen God 
face to face, who allow dead letters to remain dead 
letters, who do not allow inspired sentences like 
Isaiah’s to clutch them in their hearts and choke them 
in their throats. They do not want to start life on a 
level that will be hard to maintain. They will be pru- 
dent and safe in such important matters. And if the 
spiritual world of today dies of anything, it seems 
likely to die of the miasma of low levels, the levels of 
caution and prudence, the levels that would have 
ruined Jesus if he had accepted them, the levels that 
were ruining his people before his eyes. 


LAUNCHING LIFE HIGH 

Speaking of our own times, the late Bishop Creigh- 
ton said: ‘I have no doubt what is the greatest dan- 
ger of the new century—it is the absence of high aspira- 
tions.” For my part I have no question as to one of 
the deadliest doubts prevalent in our time. It is the 
doubt as to the practicability and possibility of life at 
Christ’s level. We are eager to be active and useful, 
bound to be orthodox if it takes all the shibboleths that 
ean be quoted. We are strong on historic Christianity 
and weak on practical Christianity. We loudly assert 
the deity of Christ as a doctrine and then go on with 
perfectly ordinary, conventional emotions, decisions, 
lives. We stand off and admire a scene like the one 
before us and grow eloquent about the behavior of 
Jesus in that dull service in the synagogue in his home 
town, and never even seem to dream of getting into 

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the scene with Jesus in any modern Nazareth. We are 
afraid of being so fanatical as to make a scene, espe- 
cially before our neighbors and relatives. We will 
exhibit our religious idealism somewhere else, in some 
town or before some congregation where they do not 
know us and our people. 

Meantime there is no way into a life like Christ’s 
except his way, and no hope for the world of our day 
as there was none for the world of his day except the 
hope that such lives bring. Why do we hold him so 
far away in practice? Why do we admire his way so 
much and use it so little? Keep that scene before us. 
T covet here the gift of fresh and convincing speech. 
What lies at the bottom of Jesus’ use of those noble 
old words, the use that set them to blazing with life 
right there before the eyes of his neighbors and rela- 
tives? It was surely not that he used the words with 
a new accent and emphasis. An elocutionist might 
have done that and only made the people conscious of 
his own presence. 

But as Jesus read those ancient words, with the per- 
sonal emphasis upon the personal terms, the people be- 
came aware of the presence of God, because Jesus him- 
self was, as Browning said, so “very sure of God.” 
They did not simply rediscover the beauty of some 
sentences written by their famous prophet, nor that 
their strange townsman had used those words in an 
unusual way. Out of the scene came and comes the 
revelation that God means something in a personal 
life that has either been forgotten or never before seen. 
T am not afraid here either of mysticism or of spiritual 
extravagance, for I am sure we have never gotten any- 
where near to a realization of the place of God or the 

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meaning of God in the life of Jesus, or any other life, 
for that matter. Maybe our next great discovery in 
religion, as we come to that new day in which the 
Holy Spirit will have his true place in experience, will 
be the discovery of the meaning of God in the earthly 
life of Jesus. Maybe this is one of the things of Christ 
which the Holy Spirit has to show to us in this age in 
which spirituality and materialism are fighting for 
human personality as never before. 

I am not trying to make a doctrine of God or a doc- 
trine of Christ, but I am trying to discover and set out 
for other men facing their lives in modern synagogues 
the personal meaning of God, the personal sense of 
God, the personal presence of God as the very basis of 
life. This was the thing that gave steadiness and 
depth, transparency and power to his life. Thomas 
Arnold said of the boys of Rugby that “God was not 
in all their thoughts,’ meaning that God was not in 
any of their thoughts. One has only to quote that old 
word to see at once that Jesus had no thoughts at all 
that God was not in. One student writes: “It is surely 
fair to begin where Jesus began; and Jesus began with 
God.” And another adds: “The object of Jesus was 
to induce men to base all life on God.” Here is where 
modern life is weak and unstable. Its sense of God is 
vague and indefinite, its consciousness of God dim and 
uncontrolling. The modern world relies upon a hun- 
dred secondary powers and fails to place itself fully 
and fairly upon the real basis and center of life. Jesus 
standing there in that home synagogue saying “the 
spirit of the Lord is upon me,” and “he hath anointed 
me’ is at the place where his own personality centers, 
and where all personality must center. 


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GOD AND THE HALF-GODS 

You remember how Wells puts it in the word of Mr. 
Britling: “Religion is the first thing and the last 
thing, and until a man has found God and been found 
by God he begins at no beginning, he works to no 
end.” The half gods have come. They are in control 
of men’s lives. The God of Jesus Christ is in eclipse 
in our age. He has no vital, practical meaning for a 
large part of our modern world. The prosperous 
classes think him superfluous, the unprosperous think 
him useless. Scholars shut him out of their thinking, 
and the ignorant and educated alike all too largely 
shut him out of their living. We have new idolatries 
and polytheisms, conventional and official beliefs 
about God and a vast unconcern toward him. More 
than one thoughtful student of Europe feels that the 
crash came because Europe was without a keen sense 
of the place of God in human life. I know perfectly 
well, looking at Jesus in the synagogue and elsewhere, 
how high his level was and how hard it is for us to 
walk on the level. I know what cowards we are in the 
' face of supreme visions, how we see the heights, then 
flinch and turn back to the moderate lowlands that 
we count safe. But I know also that whether we 
will take it or not, there is no other way into life 
than Jesus’ way, no other way to treat God in life 
than his way, that the half gods will ruin us at last 
and that the half gods will not go until the real God 
comes. 

We know the difference between Jesus Christ and 
ourselves, between his matchless life and ours. We 
make all too much of that difference. We exalt it into 
a doctrine and make our own lives thin and futile by 


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the process. I have many wishes for the youth of my 
generation. Their faces, as I] have seen them in col- 
lege and conference through a lifetime, are ever before 
me. Their voices are in my ears. But I have no wish 
for them that surpasses, none that equals, my wish 
that the youth of this day shall stand close up to 
Jesus Christ as he stood in that synagogue, that God 
may be to them in fullest possible measure what God 
was to him. We need not be afraid either of mysti- 
cism or supernaturalism. Nor do we need to fear to 
imitate Jesus as far as we may. Once it was believed 
that no one could see God and live through the experi- 
ence. In this better day which Jesus brought we know 
that no one can live without seeing him. There is no 
other basis for personal life. There is no other level 
than this level upon which Jesus stood. We may not 
be big enough or brave enough to stand with him, but 
having seen him there we know that there is no other 
place to stand. On those heights he stood to interpret 
his life, to declare its purposes, define its spirit and 
relations. If he had stood or tried to stand on any 
lower level his life would have been lost, all life would 
have been lost. We see that for him. We must see it 
for ourselves if our own lives are to be redeemed from 
the things that destroy them. 


II 
The second thing that strikes us as we study this 
scene is that Jesus was acutely aware of his relation to 
the world’s deep need. 
This New Testament is an inexorable book. When 
you begin to read a story you are forced to read clear 
on to the end of it. You cannot stop with the spec- 


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tacle of a burning bush, a curious phenomenon on the 
landscape. There will come a voice out of the bush 
before the story is concluded, and a duty, a conflict 
with Pharaoh, and the long hard task of emancipat- 
ing a race of slaves. You cannot stop just with a per- 
sonal interest in getting eternal life as an additional 
possession. The inquiry for that is not fully answered 
until the inquirer gets adjusted to his other posses- 
sions, sees the faces of the poor, feels the grip of other 
men’s needs, and catches step with that sandal-shod 
man walking through service and sacrifice toward Cal- 
vary. You cannot stand on these heights in Nazareth 
with Jesus while the Spirit of God falls on him and 
the anointing comes like the favor of God unless you 
will go on to the redemptive service to the deaf, the 
blind, the poor, and the prisoner. 


FROM PRIVILEGE TO SERVICE 

You cannot stop to enjoy the transfiguration splen- 
dors, or build booths for permanent residence on the 
high hill where that glory shines. What happens there 
is too near the foot of the hill where evil spirits of 
many sorts are destroying priceless youth while im- 
potent disciples stand around in helplessness and prob- 
ably futile talk. Emotions that exhaust themselves in 
being felt, admirations that end in admiring, raptures 
that go no further than exaltation of feeling, all stop 
far short of their full reach. The New Testament car- 
ries you, when it gets a grip on you, straight on with 
Jesus. He knows the way from privilege to service. 
He keeps the doctrine of election straight and true. 
He sees the path from anointing to sacrifice. His emo- 
tions are not aesthetic but ethical and redemptive. 


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He knows the logic of life and does not falter or fail 
to follow through to life’s vital conclusions. And again 
I know no way to go with Jesus at all except to go the 
whole way with him, first mile and second mile and 
all the uncounted miles over which he goes. I see no 
way in any age, our age or any other, to keep fellow- 
ship with him and avoid his kind of fellowship with 
those others, the blind, deaf, prisoners, lepers and the 
like. They all go together, he and they. If we go 
with him we must also go with them, and with him to 
them. 

How human those sentences are! One can easily 
imagine the tones of the Master’s voice and the look 
on his face as he spoke them. There was nothing pro- 
fessional or formal in the way he quoted these noble 
old words. He knew their immediate application to 
his own life and experience. He knew where they 
would lead him. We know where they did lead him. 
Why do we not go on to say that we know where they 
are leading him? For is he not 


Toiling up new Calvarys ever, 
With the cross that turns not back. 


It is easy also to imagine what we would have done if 
we had been present in the synagogue that day. Im- 
agined, hypothetical reactions to such scenes are very 
common with us. We have multitudes of heroisms and 
noble emotions as we view the distant scene. We are 
very positive about what we would have done if we 
had been present at Nazareth or elsewhere when those 
who were present were behaving in ways that seem 
very bad to us. For example, I like to think that if 
IT had been sitting or standing in the synagogue that 
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day, a young Jew knowing Jewish history and sensi- 
tive to the spirit of prophecy, I would have dis- 
cerned the meaning of this scene, and when Jesus re- 
peated these words and outlined this program for his 
life I would have leaped to his side to take my place 
with him, to share his life, to go any length with him. 
I like to think that I would have thrown my cap in the 
air, and would have disturbed the dull meeting by 
crying out to him: “If that is your program, if that 
is your spirit, I am with you, I am with you!” 

Of course, that is what I hope I would have done, 
what I know any young person ought to have done. 
It would have meant so much to me and so much to 
him. But in the long history of high matters like re- 
ligion, men’s reactions to such scenes as this are not 
very creditable or encouraging. Men are genuinely 
tested by their reactions to just such occurrences, their 
vital response to great utterance or significant action. 
Life has few tests that are severer than this. We are 
always nobly responsive to other speeches than those 
we are hearing, other calls than those that are flash- 
ing before our eyes or sounding in our ears. But our 
ears are dull to the call of Christ to us, our eyes are 
closed to the open vision of Christ given to us, our 
hearts dull and fat, heavy and complacent in the face 
of his current, living, redemptive activities and rela- 
tions. I know what I ought to have done if I had 
been at Nazareth that day, but in the face of my own 
conduct in other Nazareths, and the conduct of other 
men in history, I am compelled to carry my shoes in 
my hand and bow my head on my breast. Some day 
he will get a group, large or small, who will stand with 
him on his high levels, and walk with him in his re- 

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demptive ways, and when he does, this scripture will 
be fulfilled afresh. 


SECONDARY DEVOTION 

In his redemptive ways, I have said, for there is 
where we must go with him. This word he quoted, 
and personally applied to himself, was from that Old 
Testament evangelist who most clearly saw the figure 
of the redeemer. He had no illusions as to his place 
or work in the world. He was not come to be simply 
an oculist or an aurist or a prison reformer; not simply 
to be a wonder worker or a wonder speaker. He knew 
why he was called Jesus. And upon every day of his 
life, every act and every event of his life, the light of 
his own cross was falling. His cross did not cast a dark 
shadow upon a bright world. It cast a bright figure 
upon a dark world. There is no way to stand with him 
except his way. Men can stand away from him, ad- 
miring his teaching, praising his character, exalting his 
deeds of mercy and help. Men are doing it every- 
where. They are making a shibboleth of Jesus, an 
imposing and logical orthodoxy about him. 

Probably never in Christian history was there a 
larger body of secondary devotion and secondary rela- 
tion to Jesus Christ than at this hour. It is not all 
meant to be secondary but no relation or devotion to 
him can be primary that lacks the redemptive quality. 
We cannot get a Christian civilization except by the 
way of spiritual redemption. “If we aim at reform 
or civilization, we shall fail. If we aim at redemption, 
we shall win.” Jesus never got away from the primary 
position. He had not two centers for his life. And 
just as I can see no other level for life than Jesus’ 

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level, so can I see no other center for life than Jesus’ 
center. We can never stand in true relation to him 
except by standing all the time where he stands, at the 
redemptive center of life and personality. 

It is the habit of many good men to do this part of 
the time, in weeks or months of special relation in the 
year. But Jesus was not the redeemer just on occa- 
sion or for part of his work. He was the redeemer 
all the time, the redeemer for all men, the redeemer 
for all groups, the redeemer for all nations and races. 
It is this at last that sets him in a class by himself, his 
God above all other gods. It is this that gives us our 
message to modern society and to the non-Christian 
world. “There is no other name” than the name given 
to him before his birth. 

This purpose of redemption is what gave unity to his 
life, that set its key, determined its direction, created 
its spirit and made it all of one piece. This gave 
direction to his earthly life as it began, and kept it 
coing steadily ahead to its end. This redemptive 
passion kept his whole life together in an evenly bal- 
anced, unbroken unity. This keeps it one through 
the centuries. What he was yesterday he is today and 
will be forever. ‘The redemptive passion of Christ 
did not begin at Nazareth and end at Calvary. From 
before the foundations until this hour the Redeemer 
works. It was this that he was thinking of that day in 
the village church, surrounded by his neighbors and 
relatives. He could not keep his touch with all life 
by getting off the true center of his own. He was 
tempted over and over to become a reformer, a wonder 
worker, a superior teacher, but he kept on the high 
level and at the true center through it all, the redemp- 

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tive level and the redemptive center. And there is 
no other way. 

Let us close as we began with that Nazareth scene 
before us, with those matchless accents in our ears, 
with that supreme figure standing there on the heights 
and at the center. He was not speaking with detach- 
ment or with academic composure. These old words 
that he was quoting had him by the heart and were 
carrying him out to the hard, fruitful, bitter, glorious 
years. I think they still have him by the heart and 
are carrying him on in these troubled days. There 
does not seem to be any other place than a place with 
him, on those heights and at that center. No wonder 
the Father said more than once, “In him I am well 
pleased.” No wonder that at the end he could look 
his Father in the face and say: “I have finished the 
work thou gavest me to do.” Shall we not move up 
to him saying: “Here we stand. We can do no other. 
God help us. Amen.” 


[ 213 ] 


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Marx ALLISON MaTTHEWS 


Dr. Matthews has the distinction of being pastor of the 
largest Presbyterian church in the United States. Prob- 
ably there is no church in the country of white Protestant 
connection that outnumbers it. The First Presbyterian 
Church of Seattle includes 7,500 on its membership list. 
By his genius for organization as well as his power in the 
pulpit Dr. Matthews has extended the ministry of his church 
into some twenty-five branches which, although carrying 
on independent services and Sunday schools keep their 
affiliation with the mother church. In denominational affairs 
and the church at large Dr. Matthews has taken a con- 
spicuous place. His activity in general assembly and in 
various movements growing out of theological controversy 
has made him one of the half dozen most influential guides . 
of conservative procedure in not only his own but other 
denominations. He was moderator of the Presbyterian 
general assembly which met at Louisville in 1912. 

Dr. Matthews is a Southern man by birth, and by resi- 
dence up to the time he became pastor in Seattle. Born 
in Calhoun, Georgia, he received his academic education 
at Calhoun, which also honored him with the degree of 
D.D. Whitman College conferred the degree of LL.D. upon 
him in 1908, and Huron did the same in 1912. He began 
to preach at nineteen years of age, being ordained in 1887 
and becoming pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Cal- 
houn, Georgia, where he remained for the following five 
years. From Dalton, Georgia, where he remained for three 
years, he was called to Jackson, Tennessee, where he re- 
mained for six years, accepting in 1902 the call to his pres- 
ent church in Seattle. As an avocation he studied law 
and was actually admitted to the bar in Tennessee in 1900, 


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though he never engaged actively in practice. He is the 
author of Gospel Sword Thrusts. A vigorous and positive 
contender for his convictions, Dr. Matthews holds the 
esteem and affection of those whom he opposes in debate. 
In the crisis faced by his denomination in 1925 he was 
appointed on the committee of fifteen to bring forth some 
recommendation tending to heal the wounds of controversy 
and to further the unity of the church. 


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THE VIRGIN BIRTH OF JESUS 
By Marx A. MatrHews 


“The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, 
Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in 
the desert a highway for our God.”’—Isaiah xl, 3. 

“Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall 
prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom 
ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even 
the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: 
behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts.” 
—Malachi 11, 1. 

“Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, 
and shall call his name Immanuel.”—Isaiah vii, 14. 


The most important subject that could possibly be 
discussed is the virgin birth of Jesus. It is the battle 
ground of belief, and within the confines of its discus- 
sion are to be found two contending forces—the 
enemies of God, and the children of God. The enemies 
of Christ are making an attack upon his virgin birth, 
they are trying to discredit the records. It produces 
confusion in the minds of the people, and prevents 
them from accepting, believing in, and being benefited 
by this great truth. God’s children know, experi- 
mentally as well as historically, the truth of the doc- 
trine. They have experienced its blessedness, and are 
not shaken in their faith nor in their conception of 
the truth. 

You ask, Why is it the battleground and why is it 


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so important? It is not important to the saint, you 
might say, because he is redeemed; but it is important 
to the saint in his message to the lost world; and it is 
absolutely essential to the unsaved man because he 
cannot be saved if the virgin birth is not true. If 
the statements as to the birth of Jesus are not infallible, 
and if he was not born of a virgin, then it is impossible 
for one to be saved. Therefore, the whole plan of 
salvation is involved, and the salvation of men is at 
stake in this fight. I am very glad the fight is on, that 
the battle is raging, because, in the days gone by, while 
we were asleep Satan sowed tares in Christendom, and 
there are those in the visible organization, known as 
the church militant, who are unsaved. They are, no 
doubt, rationalists, direct agents of Satan. If they 
want to fight God, and if this doctrine is the battle- 
ground, then, when we have finished with them, if 
they have any conscience at all, we hope they will 
leave the visible ecclesiastical organization and go out 
into the world into the synagogue of Satan and stay 
there, for they most assuredly have no place in the 
real church of Jesus Christ. 

Now, there are two great truths that must be taken 
into consideration in discussing the virgin birth of 
Jesus: First, it is prophetically stated. Secondly, it 
is historically stated. 


I 


In the Old Testament it is prophetically stated, pro- 
phetically outlined, prophetically promised, and pro- 
phetically determined. Now, let us see if that is true. 
One great writer on the subject has said that God put 
this prophetic truth as a blazing star between the 

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cherubim when our first parents were driven out of 
the garden. Prophetic utterance states that the seed 
of woman shall bruise the serpent’s head. That is a 
prophetic statement of fact, and promise. It must 
come true or fall of its own weakness. Is it false, or 
is it a fact—which? Will it be possible for the seed 
of woman? Which woman? is the great question. 
We find prophecy begins to define which woman—not 
only the seed of woman, but the seed of Abraham. 
Prophetic utterance says the seed of woman, the seed 
of Abraham; the seed of Isaac. And then the line 
begins to lengthen. We find that Isaac had two sons, 
and we wonder through which one this prophetic truth 
is to come. Scripture states it shall be the seed of 
Jacob. Again, we find that there must be more explan- 
ation, because Jacob had more than one son, and we 
find that it must be through the seed of Judah, the 
fourth son. We get a little closer and there must 
be another definition. It must come through the seed 
of Judah, through the seed of David, that this seed 
of the woman must come in unbroken line and through 
this royal family in unbroken steps. And in these 
unbroken steps, and through this unbroken line pro- 
phetic history, prophetic promise and prophetic truth 
portray that he must come through this regal family, 
and from him this royalty will never depart. 

The divine heir who is to be born must be born in 
Bethlehem—Bethlehem of Judah and of David. This 
was the divinely selected spot. He must have his fore- 
runner; and he must be called Immanuel, which when 
literally interpreted means, “God with Us—Divine- 
Human Being.” That is the meaning of Immanuel— 
Divine-Human. 


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Those prophetic utterances are there, and no Jew 
on earth can deny them, and no one who can read 
history can deny them—they are there. Well, they 
must be there for a definite reason. They must have 
been placed there by almighty God. They were super- 
naturally written, they reveal a supernatural fact and 
a supernatural line, for the purpose of bringing a super- 
natural person into existence. What are you going to 
do with such prophetic utterances? Prophecy, infalli- 
ble prophecy, states that a virgin shall give birth to 
this person I have outlined in this line of genealogy. 
What are you going to do with it? You cannot destroy 
it. Some men have tried to. They begin, as one great 
writer has said, by saying that it is one of the most 
unscientific statements ever made. Why? Because 
it is in violation of all formulas, doctrines, etc., that 
can be taught. Now is it possible for this individual 
to come into existence with only a mother? We grant, 
for the sake of argument, that it is just exactly as they 
say—the most marvelous statement ever made and 
the most marvelous fact ever announced. But scrip- 
ture does not state that Jesus Christ was without a 
father. All history recognizes Mary as the mother. 
The battle is around the question of the fatherhood 
of Jesus Christ. 

The scientific world says to speak of the virgin 
birth is to speak of an unscientific fact. We frankly 
say to you that, so far as the scientific method is con- 
cerned, it does contradict it. But that is not the reason 
he is of virgin birth. Thank God, it is an unscientific 
fact in the language in which you use the term. You 
have proved the case. But scripture, my friends, does 
not so state it. You say it is unthinkable, as certain 


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writers have said it is, that one child could come into 
existence without a father. Scripture does not say 
that he came without a father. Scripture specifically 
states who the father is. But, you say, this doctrine 
we are now discussing is a useless doctrine. It is the 
most important doctrine ever presented to the people. 
Why? First of all, the credibility of scripture rests on 
this doctrine. The whole question of the credibility 
of scripture rests on this doctrine. Why? Prophetic 
utterances state that he would come in the line of 
which I have spoken. Prophetic utterances state he 
would come of a virgin; prophetic utterances said he 
would be born in Bethlehem; prophetic utterances 
said he would be called Immanuel. Now is that true, 
or is it false? If it is true, then all scripture stands as 
the infallible word of God. If it is false, the whole 
Bible is false. Is that not important? 

Again, some one has said the scripture does not 
announce his paternal side. Scripture does nothing 
else but announce it. What does scripture say? It 
says that he is the son of God; states, all the way 
through, that he will be born of a virgin and will be 
the son of God. Scripture announced his father’s side. 
Scripture stated that the Holy Ghost conceived his 
body in the womb of the virgin. But, you say again 
that scripture seems to contradict. Luke traces his 
genealogy through the mother. Matthew traces it 
through the father. Matthew speaks of the legal 
father in legal terms of the census, and speaks of 
Joseph back through the line I have mentioned—all 
the way back. Luke speaks of it through Mary, David, 
and all the way back. But, one critic has said, there 
seems to be a question. Well, when Joseph is men- 

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tioned in one place as having two fathers, Matthew 
names the father who begat him and his father-in- 
law. Luke traces through Mary and recognizes the 
son-in-law position. Scripture mentions both. Why? 
In order that it might be possible for anyone to trace 
the genealogy of Christ. Scripture states the relation- 
ship of Joseph as a son begotten and a son-in-law, but 
nowhere does scripture. speak of Joseph as being the 
father of Jesus Christ. There is not a line in scripture 
that has ever intimated that Joseph is his father. But 
every line speaks of Mary as the mother. What else? 
Every line in scripture in which the statement is made 
speaks of God as being the father of Jesus Christ. Not 
only did God say that he was the father, but he never 
said or intimated anything else. Why did not God on 
the day of the baptism say: “He is the son of Joseph, 
in whom I am well pleased?” Scripture speaks of the 
only-begotten son of God, the first-begotten son of 
God. 

Again: Jesus Christ at no time mentioned, or in 
any way intimated that he was the son of Joseph. 
He says he is the son of God, and never intimates 
anything else. There is not a single line anywhere in 
holy writ indicating that Joseph ever claimed to be 
the father of Jesus Christ. 

Some one is going to say—has already said—did 
not Christ say that he was the son of man? Yes; 
doesn’t scripture say that he was the son of man? Is 
it not admitted that he is the son of man? But it does 
not say any specific man. Why? And why does Jesus 
speak of himself as the son of man and the son of God? 
Is it possible for one to be the son of man and the 
son of God at the same time? Yes, if the virgin birth 

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The Virgin Birth of Jesus 


be a fact. That is the only way by which one can be 
the son of man and the son of God at the same time. 
But how? He must have a divine father and a human 
mother, and, by having a divine father and a human 
mother he is the son of God and the son of man. How? 
By that process which scripture shows forth—that like 
begets like. Is that not true? Is it not possible, if 
God touched the earth and made Adam, and touched 
Adam and made Eve, that the sovereign God of this 
universe could touch the womb of the virgin and con- 
ceive the body of Jesus Christ? That is the only way 
it could be possible for him to be the son of God and 
the son of man at the same time. When you speak 
of the virgin birth you are speaking of the great plan, 
for that is the way of the incarnation. But some one 
is going to say: “Then Jesus Christ did not come by 
generation.” He did not. He came by the extraor- 
dinary process of divine conception—conceived by the 
Holy Ghost. 

Now turn back to the question of the importance 
of this great doctrine. On the fact of the virgin birth 
rests the credibility of scripture. On the fact of the 
virgin birth rests the sinlessness of Christ. If you are 
going to bring Christ into existence with a human 
father and mother, if incarnation is to come about by 
the natural process of generation, then the son of man 
must come with a sinful body. But, being of a divine 
father and a human mother, his body being by divine 
conception and not by generation, he takes on himself 
the human form without inheriting, by generation, the 
sinfulness of nature. If he had inherited, then he could 
not have assumed sin. 

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Again: the virgin birth of Christ makes it possible 
for Christ to be the redeemer, and it was impossible 
for a human being to be the redeemer. The Epistle 
to the Hebrews states that he was clothed with human 
form, that he was made flesh, that it was conceived 
for him for the purpose and in order that he, the son 
of God, might redeem men. There could have been 
no redemption if the virgin birth had not occurred. 
Oh, that precious truth! That God conceived for him 
a body that he might come into existence, born of a 
virgin, free from sin, and that he might stand before 
God possessing divine nature and offer sacrifice suf- 
ficient that men might be redeemed. Only God could 
suffer for you sufficiently to redeem you from sin. Only 
God in human form, incarnated by the conceiving 
power of the Holy Ghost, could vicariously die for 
you. So, not only is the credibility of scripture resting 
on the truth, but the redemptive work of Christ is 
resting on this truth. The sinlessness of Christ and 
his vicarious death rest on the truth of the virgin birth. 
Is it not worth fighting for? 

Extraordinary? Yes. It could not have been ordi- 
nary. Of divine origin, Christ could not have been 
merely human. Oh, it could not have been otherwise. 
The everlasting son of God was born of the virgin that 
he might take on himself our form and in that form 
die for us in order that we might live in his divine 
form for ever and ever. Oh, this blessed Christ, our 
everlasting redeemer, is doubly precious because of 
this fact. Will you take him as your Savior? He is 
yours if you will accept him. He came to save you. 
The supernatural son of God, supernaturally incar- 

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The Virgin Birth of Jesus 


nated, supernaturally sacrificed, supernaturally raised, 
is supernaturally coming, will supernaturally gather 
you unto himself, because he is the son of God. Will 
you take him? “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
thou shalt be saved.” 


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WILLIAM Pierson MERRILL 


Dr. Merrill has come both by temperament and by force 
of circumstances into a position of definite leadership of 
the more liberal forces, not of his denomination alone, but 
of American Protestantism. And this without being in any 
sense a radical or ruthless modernist. Indeed, it is prob- 
able that the very moderation of his theological views fits 
him for the responsibility which his brethren recognize as 
belonging to him in the present state of the church. Soundly 
evangelical in his own convictions, he insists nevertheless 
upon the principle of liberty for the preacher as itself of 
far greater importance than correctness of theological opin- 
ion. To his mind the church can keep itself morally and 
intellectually sanitary only as it gives free play to the 
expression of truth as each teacher sees it, subject to the one 
unifying condition of loyalty to Christ. The Protestant 
principle he maintains is the liberty of testifying to the 
faith that is in the soul without dictation or repression from 
any human authority. In his book on The Freedom of the 
Preacher, Dr. Merrill has wrought out his thesis, not in 
its theoretical terms alone, but in terms which involve the 
actual practice of the preacher as the leader of a congre- 
gation and a member in the fellowship of a body of believers 
from whose tradition and prevailing views he may be com- 
pelled to dissent. The problem is delicate, as any fair mind 
must admit, but the principle at stake is vital for free 
Protestantism. 

As pastor of Brick Church on Fifth Avenue, New York 
City, Dr. Merrill may be said to have risen to one of the 
most influential pulpits in America. Along with his pulpit 
and parish ministry he has allowed his brethren to lay upon 
him many responsibilities of a denominational and general 


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sort. Since 1915 he has been president of the board of 
trustees of the Church Peace Union established by Mr. 
Carnegie. 

Born in New Jersey, in 1867, Dr. Merrill was educated 
at Rutgers College from which he was graduated in 1887 
with the A.B. degree, receiving his A.M. degree in 1890. In 
the latter year he was graduated with the B.D. degree from 
Union Theological Seminary, and has been the recipient 
of the honorary degree of D.D. from both Rutgers College 
and New York University. Previous to his Brick Church 
ministry he held two pastorates only—at Chestnut Hill 
Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, for five years, and Sixth 
Presbyterian Church, Chicago, for the sixteen years between 
1895 and 1911. His books are Faith Building, Faith and 
Sight, Footings for Faith, Christian Internationalism, The 
Freedom of the Preacher, Liberal Christiamty. 


CHRIST, OUR RELIGION 
By WILLIAM Pierson MirriLu 
“T am the way, and the truth, and the life.””—John iv, 6. 


It is natural to distrust one who thrusts himself 
forward. We instinctively discount the worth of one 
who says “I” very much. What then shall we think 
of Jesus? Did anyone else ever so confidently and 
calmly offer himself as important, even essential? Who 
else ever made so much use of the first personal pro- 
noun? Run over his great sayings: “I am the door’; 
“T am the bread of life”; “I am the light of the world” ; 
“T am the good shepherd”; “Come unto me, all ye that 
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” 
Take this text: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” 
That is the same as saying, “I am religion.” What 
shall we think of one who talks in such fashion about 
himself and his own importance and place? 

It is an evidence of the divine nature and authority 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, more potent even than many 
of the proofs we rely upon most readily, that he could 
say such words, and be met, not with incredulity and 
derision, but with adoration. Let any other character 
in the history of the world, even the greatest and most 
honored, stand and say, “I am the resurrection and the 
life”; “I am the way, the truth, and the life’; “Heaven 
and earth shall pass away but my words shall not pass 


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away”; and we would pity him for his megalomania, 
or despise him for his vanity. Jesus says it, and we 
fall at his feet and worship. Somehow it does not 
detract an atom from his humility, his meekness and 
lowliness of heart. 

Two centuries ago and more, the Grand Monarch of 
that time said, “J am the state’; and while many 
bowed, and a few were impressed, thoughtful men 
knew it for the vain boast of a braggart. When he 
died, the people followed his body to the grave with 
curses. Within a hundred years his own nation rose, 
and gave a terribly effective answer, in blood and fire, 
to his boast. So men meet unfounded claims. But 
nineteen centuries ago, a carpenter from Galilee, with 
a little following of plain men, said, “I am the way, 
and the truth, and the life’; and the days of his birth 
and of his death are honored increasingly every year, 
and every year the number grows of those who look 
on him only to worship him as God. What other 
explanation is there than that Jesus was what he 
claimed to be? 


I 


I have stated that to say, “I am the way, the truth, 
and the life,” is equivalent to saying, “I am religion.” 
Is not that true? Suppose you could somehow go to 
all the religious people you know, and ask each one 
of them, “What is religion?” You would get a bewilder- 
ing variety of answers, for each soul has the inalien- 
able right to see God for himself, and to come to God 
for himself. But the great bulk of the answers could 
be readily classified under three heads. 

First of all there would be some who would answer, 


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Christ, Our Religion 


“Religion? Why, religion is a way. It has to do 
most of all with conduct, with what we do and how 
we live. The essential thing in religion is morality,” 
they would say; “religion is a way.” There is truth 
and value in that answer. Certainly there is no true 
religion that does not make a difference in the way 
one lives his life. Morality is inseparable from religion. 
A very large part of the message of the great prophets 
has to do with conduct, how men live. One of the 
earliest names for the Christian movement, before the 
name “Christian” was thought of, was, we learn from 
the New Testament, “The Way.” It was as if, looking 
at that little original company of Christians, people 
instinctively said, “They are different; they live and 
think and act in a special way.” 

It is a good answer, so far as it goes. 

A second group would be found, who would say, 
“Religion? Why, religion is a truth, or a system of 
truth. What marks the Christian is what he believes, 
what he holds to be true. Christianity is a doctrine 
above all.” There has always been, in the church, a 
large and strong group that would give this answer, 
as on the whole the best. There is truth and value 
in this view. Religion would not get far or do much, 
unless it had at its heart some great, sure beliefs, 
truths, about God and duty and the soul and life, about 
sin and salvation from sin. Those who say religion is 
a truth, give a strong and splendid answer, so far as it 
goes. A third group would answer, “Religion? why 
religion is life. It is not something put on, but some- 
thing put in, a spirit, an inner experience. It is ‘Christ 
dwelling in the heart by faith.’ It is ‘the life of God 
in the soul of man.’ It is, more than it is anything 


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else, a spiritual experience.” There is truth and value 
in that answer. Religion is life—the whole Bible says 
so; the heart of man knows it to be true. Indeed, if 
one must choose among these answers, taking one and 
rejecting the others, perhaps he may better take this 
than either of the others. To many of us religion is 
life, even more than it is truth, or way, if we must 
choose. 

If we must choose; yes! But that is exactly what 
we must not do. To take any one of these three as an 
adequate answer is a mistake. Each is insufficient. 
They belong together. And Christ and his gospel put 
them together. This is the word of the Master, “the 
way, and the truth, and the life.” The saying is the 
more significant that it was given in answer to a 
request for one of the three things only. “How shall we 
know the way?’ asked Thomas; and Jesus answered, 
adding truth and life to way. It is as if he said, “You 
need more than way; you must have way and truth 
and life all together, fused, blended in one experience.” 
In fact, Christ our Master does two wonderful things 
for us in this saying. The first is to show us clearly 
that religion is not one of these, but all three; that 
each needs the others. 

Is not that the fact? Plain proof comes from seeing 
what happens to religion when any one of these ele- 
ments crowds the others out. There have been, and 
are, bodies of religious folk that have stressed and 
emphasized the idea that religion is above all the way; 
that its chief concern is with conduct. They have 
slighted truth and life; they are hazy as to doctrine, 
and cold as to spiritual experience. And there is a 
sterility, a deadness, a self-righteousness, a lack of 


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Christ, Our Religion 


warmth and passion, about them which makes us 
think of William Watson’s characterization of the 
church— 
Outwardly splendid as of old; 
Inwardly sparkless, dull, and cold; 
Her strength and fire all spent and gone, 
Like the dead moon, she still shines on. 


A religion which is only a way is not enough. Con- 
fucianism is only a way. Christianity is a way; but it 
is more, vastly more. 

Nor is it hard to find instances of religious bodies, 
or parties, that have held that religion is truth, so 
completely, so all but exclusively, that they have 
slighted and neglected the way and the life. There 
are men, and parties, there have been denominations 
and ecclesiastical bodies, so intent on doctrines as to 
identify their “little systems” with essential Christi- 
anity, and to belittle moral conduct and spiritual 
experience. And always there is an intolerance, a 
bitterness of spirit, a pride of opinion, a cold and 
barren dogmatism, about such parties and groups which 
bear irrefutable testimony to the defectiveness of their 
religious ideal. Mohammedanism isa dogma. Christi- 
anity is more, immensely more. 

Certainly it is not hard to find, in the many mystic 
cults and emotional fads that abound today, instances 
which prove how inadequate and dangerous is a relig- 
ion which is only life, without the truth and the way. 
There is life in these new forms of religious experience. 
There is spiritual fervor, zest, enthusiasm, a sense of 
being “in tune with the infinite,” of rhythm and har- 
mony. But along with it goes a cloudy, vague, shift- 
ing sense of truth, and an easy morality which con- 


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fuses good and evil, and leaves conduct without an 
adequate conductor. There is a decisive proof that 
a religion of life, lacking truth and way, is shallow 
and unsafe, and, in the end, unsatisfying. 

No, religion must be all three—a Way, a Truth, a 
Life. A Christianity which is only the way becomes 
ethical culture; a Christianity which is only the truth 
becomes dogmatism; a Christianity which is only the 
life becomes mysticism. Each is imperfect. Just as 
water must have its two atoms of hydrogen and one 
atom of oxygen, and they must blend, or there is no 
water; so way, and truth, and life, conduct, belief, 
and spiritual experience, must blend, or there is no 
Christianity, no true religion. We need and must have, 
way, and truth, and life. The way lighted by the 
truth, and traveled by the life; the truth set aglow 
by the life, and opening into the way; the life, informed 
by the truth, and guided in the way—that is religion, 
as nothing less can be. 


But this is only one of the two great gifts our Lord 
bestowed upon us when he gave us this wonderful 
saying. It is a question if the second is not even 
greater. For he not only makes us see that religion 
is all three, way, truth, life, fused in one blessed and 
beautiful experience. He also shows where we may 
find all three, best expressed, and fused in one supreme 
object of trust, love, and worship, in himself. “J am 
the way, and the truth, and the life,” is his message. 

The earnest soul asks, where shall I find “the way”? 
How can I know what to do, how to live, a path to 
follow in my conduct? Countless books have been 

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Christ, Our Religion 


written on moral principles and ethical standards, giv- 
ing good counsel and guidance. But the real Christian 
goes, for light on how to live and walk, not to these 
books chiefly, but to the teachings and example of 
Christ. Better than to search out and attempt to apply 
the wisest books ever written on the way of life is to 
see Jesus, and to hear him say, ‘Follow me,’ and then 
to follow, simply, trustfully, without reserve, just doing 
every day what we know he wants us to do. He is the 
way. 

And he is the Truth. Our restless minds seek after 
truth through the ranges of the universe. Thank God 
for the freedom and boundless expanse of that quest! 
But where shall we find that sure, eternal rock of truth 
on which our souls may build for eternity, and know 
that they are safe and sure? What mighty efforts the 
masters and doctors, the creedmakers and teachers, 
have made, to find and set forth the truth. But, 
friends, you know, as I do, that no creed ever written, 
apostles’ creed, Nicene creed, Westminster confession, 
or any other, is the truth in such sense that the human 
soul can say, “Here I rest; I have found all I need.” 
Why, the most glorious, the most Christian, statements 
in the Westminster confession of faith are those in 
which it expressly disclaims its own infallibility. 
Where shall we find the truth? In Christ. He is the 
truth. You find in him, better than in any creed or 
learned book, the truth about God and man and 
duty and all that concerns life. Do I want to know 
the truth about God? I look to Christ, and there I 
see God, as I see and know him nowhere else. Would 
I know the truth about myself? I look to Christ, and 
there I am revealed, in my sin and selfishness, in my 

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poverty and weakness, and no less in my possible god- 
liness; revealed as I see in him what I am not but 
know I ought to be. Christ not only teaches the truth; 
he zs the truth. He not only tells us what man ought 
to be; he is what man ought to be. He not only 
tells me about God; he is God. He is the truth my 
soul and your soul needs. 

And, above all and gloriously, Christ is the life. It is 
in him that we find our souls renewed, our spirits 
quickened, our strength made sufficient for all things. 
The most wonderful fact about our religion is that it 
is a way of life, a power within, a dear and real com- 
panionship, a walking with Christ, the possession of a 
“life hid with Christ in God.” We rejoice in one who 
gave us precepts for conduct more beautiful and real 
and useful even than those the great prophets gave. 
We delight in one who gave us truth as no theologian 
has given it. But here is the joy and the glory of the 
Christian faith—that it gives us life, a vital experi- 
ence, a fellowship with God, a friendship deepening 
with the years, “Christ in us, the hope of glory.” 


iil 


It is here that Paul found the center and value of his 
religion. How he gloried in this Christ life within his 
soul! The cross meant much to Paul. But the cross 
without the resurrection would have meant little or 
nothing to him. “If when we were enemies we were 
reconciled to God by the death of his Son; much more, 
being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” So 
he always speaks—“Christ our life,” “Christ in me,” 
“Christ in the heart by faith.” That is what Chris- 
tianity meant to Paul, and means to us. 


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Christ, Our Religion 


“T am the way, the truth, and the life.” Christ is 
religion. Having him, we need nothing more. All that 
is essential to Christianity is in him. 

The most certain and glorious fact about Christian- 
ity is that it centers in a person. That is why it is a 
living religion, a religion that can adapt itself with 
equal ease to men of the first century, or men of the 
twentieth, or men of the two hundredth, if there shall 
be so many; to Greeks, Romans, barbarians, Anglo- 
Saxons, Chinese, Africans. That is why it grows with 
our growth, and fits the mind of today as perfectly 
as it fitted the minds of the first century. It 1s a relig- 
ion of personality, the religion of personality. There 
is something about personality which makes it indefin- 
able, yet sure, a grace, a charm, a truth ever-changing 
yet ever the same. Every one of us here present knows 
that his personality has developed and changed 
through the years, and yet is in deepest reality the 
same. Christianity is universal, the hope of the world, 
because it is a religion of personality. When I stood in 
the great Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin, I said to 
the director, “I suppose you went down to solid rock 
to find a firm foundation for your telescope.” “No,” 
was the unexpected answer. “Solid rock is too rigid. 
It transmits earth vibrations. We made a huge pocket 
in the rock and filled it with fine sand, and on that 
we set our telescope.” So God has based our faith, 
our life, on what sometimes seems to over-rigid souls 
shifting sand, the grace of personality. It ultimately 
rests, not on ways laid out by Christ, or truths laid 
down about Christ, but on Christ himself, who zs the 
way, the truth, and the life. 


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IV 

My friend, have you found him? If not, you are 
missing the way, and missing the truth, and missing 
the life. It is only in Christ that you will find the 
true and rich way of life. It is only when he lives in 
you, and you in him, that you will find the sure way, 
and the real truth, and the complete life. 

If only we would alt be content with him! If we 
would seek no other way, hold no other truth, desire 
no other life, than that which we find in Christ! How 
the things that divide us would fade away, shamed, 
from his blessed presence! How the great simple uni- 
ties and verities would stand out, like mountain peaks 
above sand-dunes! How we would love each other, 
and trust each other, and go on together along his 
way, in the light of his truth, in the power of his life, 
if we could forget ourselves and all else in him. 

The best gift that could come to the church of Christ 
as a whole, to every soul everywhere, would be such an 
experience as came to the disciples on the mount, when 
they opened their eyes, and “saw no man save Jesus 
only.” May we sosee him, filling the whole field of our 
vision, may we hear him saying to us with a divine 
authority that cannot be gainsaid, “J am the way, and 
the truth, and the life. Follow me! Live in me, and I 
in you!” 

Yea, through life, death, through sorrow and through 

sinning, 

He shall suffice me, for he hath sufficed. 


Christ is the end, as Christ was the beginning; 
Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ. 


[ 238 ] 


GrorGE CAMPBELL MorcAN 


In Dr. Morgan we have the case of an Englishman who 
has preached so widely and so much in America, and gath- 
ered here so great a following, that when his brethren came 
to choose the twenty-five leading American preachers hun- 
dreds cast their ballots for him, perhaps without thought 
of his British connection. Since 1897, Dr. Morgan has been 
repeatedly in this country. Indeed, he has crossed the 
Atlantic forty-three times since that date, first as a preacher 
at Northfield in response to D. L. Moody’s invitation, and 
afterward under many auspices in all the larger cities of 
the United States and Canada. Six years ago he came with 
the purpose of staying indefinitely. Making a home for 
himself at Athens, Georgia, he is being kept so busy with 
preaching engagements throughout the country that it looks 
as if he could not return to England if he wanted to. 

Dr. Morgan’s mission as a preacher he conceives to be 
that of the interpreter of the Bible. He knows the text 
of the Scriptures with a familiarity of which few preachers 
can boast. Born in Gloucestershire in 1863, he was educated 
privately in a deeply religious home and early was thrust 
into the task of mastering the Scriptures. His early habit 
was further stimulated in his maturing years by the con- 
tact of his mind with the prevailing free thought of that 
day, which called itself agnostic. That God could be defi- 
nitely and consciously known by profound and exacting 
study of the Bible, Dr. Morgan believed, and he devoted 
himself to such study with intense passion. From his first 
modest pastorate at Staffs, England, through Westminster 
Road Church, Birmingham, and New Court Chapel, Lon- 
don, he was known all the way as a Bible preacher. The 

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climax of his career, at Westminster Chapel, London, where 
he preached from 1904 to 1917, found him standing before 
great congregations on Sunday and on week nights, unfold- 
ing the Scriptures to eager hearts. To him the Bible is 
God’s word, and he early found that the best way to get 
at the divine meaning was to study the Bible itself rather 
than books about the Bible. His lectures and sermons, there- 
fore, do not characteristically stress problems of mere 
authorship and date of this or that portion of the Scripture, 
nor any other questions of mere criticism; he deals with the 
subject matter of the Book itself, making the text its own 
interpreter. 

He is author of many books, nearly all dealing directly 
with biblical themes. Among his books are God’s Methods 
with Man, The Practice of Prayer, The Hidden Years of 
Nazareth, The Ten Commandments, The First Century 
Message to Twentieth Century Christians, The Crises of the 
Christ, Evangelism, The Analyzed Bible (10 volumes), 
Messages of the Books of the Bible (4 volumes), The Bible 
and the Cross, The Parables of the Kingdom, The Mission- 
ary Manifesto, The Ministry of the Word, The Acts of the 
Apostles. Though all churches and communities have wel- 
comed Dr. Morgan’s ministry, he has been especially favored 
with many engagements and large congregations at Fifth 
Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, and at First 
Presbyterian, Cincinnati. Chicago Theological Seminary 
conferred on him the degree of D.D. in 1902. 


[ 240 ] 


THE MIND OF CHRIST 
By G. CampseLtt Morcan 
“We have the mind of Christ.”—I Corinthians, u, 16. 


This is one of the superlative apostolic claims for 
the church of God. It has nothing to say of the 
church’s organization, of its polity, or of its methods of 
service. It is concerned with what we may imme- 
diately describe as its philosophy or wisdom; with 
that whole of truth which the church is to express 
through its organizations, which is to be the criterion 
of its polity, and which ought to govern all its methods 
of service. The words were written to “The church of 
God in Corinth . . . them that are sanctified in 
Christ Jesus, called saints; with all that call upon the 
name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, their 
Lord and ours.”’ Such were those of whom the apostle 
was thinking when he said, “We have the mind of 
Christ,” and so the words apply to the whole church 
of God, at all times. 

Corinth, at the time when this letter was written, 
was one of the wealthiest of the Greek cities. It was 
a center of learning, a veritable haunt of the school- 
men. Its abounding wealth made it a seething center 
of corruption; while the professed leaders of thought 
were largely occupied in disputes as to terms, and 
views; and being so occupied, were contributing noth- 
ing of moral or spiritual value to the life of the city. 

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The whole of this letter shows that the church of God 
in Corinth had passed very largely under the baneful 
influence of its false wisdom, and to correct that was 
a part of the purpose of the apostle in writing this 
letter. 

The apostle declared that his preaching to them had 
had nothing in common with these things. One can- 
not read the letter without feeling the almost vibrant 
sarcasm in his references to these supposed leaders. He 
refers to the wisdom of these wise, these scribes, these 
disputers, and declares it to be a wisdom wholly of the 
world, and that therefore all its rulers were coming to 
naught. Moreover, he affirmed that there was no need 
for the Christian church to be influenced by this false 
wisdom. It possessed its own wisdom; it had a Chris- 
tian philosophy; that wisdom was a mystery, hidden 
in the past, but now revealed through the Christ and 
by the Spirit of God. Paul quoted from that great 
passage in Isaiah, 


“Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, 
and which entered not into the heart of man, 
whatsoever things God prepared for them that 
love him,” 


and having made the quotation, he went on and said, 
“But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit.” 

There is a wisdom which the eye cannot detect, 
which the ear had never heard, which had never 
entered into the heart of man; but this wisdom has 
now been revealed to us by that Spirit who knoweth 
all things, and searcheth the deep things of God. That 
is the wisdom of the Christian church. She is not con- 
cerned with the discussion of the disputers, wrangling 

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The Mind of Christ 


over changing human opinions; her wisdom is 
expressed in its totality in the declaration, “We have 
the mind of Christ.” 


IS 


If these introductory sentences have proved of true 
value, they have led us to a great gateway through 
which we may look. I am conscious that no preacher 
can adequately deal with the theme. I shall be happy 
if that consciousness possess you. We may, however, 
stand at that gateway and looking through, consider 
the subject in broad outline. 

The mind of Christ. We must not confuse this word 
with another word of Paul, also of tremendous signifi- 
cance, which has connection with this, and yet must 
be considered separately. In writing to the Philippians 
he said, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in 
Christ Jesus.” Here he says, “We have the mind of 
Christ.” Whereas the connection is vital, the sepa- 
ration is important. When in writing to the Philip- 
pians he charged them that they should have the mind 
that is in Christ, he employed a verb, the verb that 
describes an exercise of mind, emotional and inspira- 
tional. When he said, “We have the mind of Christ” 
he was using a common word, that is, common because 
often used; by no means common if by that you mean’ 
commonplace in any sense of inferiority. It was a 
word that means understanding, intelligence. We have 
the understanding of Christ, we have the intelligence 
of Christ; and the understanding, or the intelligence of 
Christ not as capacity, but as consciousness. The word 
implicates first, intelligent apprehension; and secondly, 
emotional response; and finally, volitional result. The 

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mind of Christ is his knowledge, his consequent feeling, 
his resultant will; his conception of things as to the 
truth concerning them; as to the feeling produced 
within his personality by that truth; and as to his 
resultant choices and volitional activity. 

We must now remind ourselves of the limitation of 
our consideration, and its unlimited inclusiveness. The 
consideration is limited by the context, and by all the 
purpose of the apostle in writing. When we speak of 
the mind of Christ, if to us Christ is God incarnate, we 
realize immediately that the sum total of wisdom is 
involved in our phrase, for it pleased the Father that 
in him should all the fullness dwell corporeally. We 
believe that the consciousness of Christ was the con- 
sciousness of God; that the understanding and knowl- 
edge of Christ was the understanding and knowledge of 
God; that the emotional activity of the Christ was 
the emotional activity of God; that the volitional 
action, the willing and the choosing of the Christ, were 
the willing and the choosing of God. 

That includes the universe, but the reference here 
is not universal, save in implications and results. The 
limit of observation is the sphere of human failure. 
That is true of all the Biblical revelation. The Bible 
is the literature that deals with God’s activity in the 
midst of failure. The Bible never tells me what God 
would have done if there had been no evil in the uni- 
verse. The Bible never tells me whence evil came. 
The mind of Christ here is his mind as it came into 
the presence of human failure. That is why this wis- 
dom of the Christian church was foolishness to the 
Greek, and a stumbling-block to the Jew. The sign 
of the wisdom of the church is the cross. We have 

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The Mind of Christ 


only the revelation of the mind of Christ in human 
history and human failure. The theme is finally unlim- 
ited, because this central fact includes and affects all 
things. Was not that in the mind of Paul when in his 
Colossian letter he wrote: “For it was the good pleas- 
ure of the Father that in him should all the fullness 
dwell; and through him to reconcile all things unto 
himself, having made peace through the blood of his 
cross; through him, I say, whether things upon the 
earth, or things in the heaven”? That is a great decla- 
ration, dark with excess of light. 

What then is the mind of Christ? From my own 
understanding and apprehension I find first in the mind 
of Christ, the consciousness of the beauty of holiness. 
I find secondly the consciousness of the worth and 
value of lost and degraded things. I find finally the 
consciousness of the glory of realizing the possibility 
of all lost things. These are the cardinal elements in 
the mind of Christ; elements mastering all his appre- 
hensions, inspiring all his emotional life, the reason for 
all his volitional activity. 


II 

The beauty of holiness. To him God was known 
completely, finally. In his great final prayer, praying 
out of the deepest thing in his own life, and also in 
all human life, he said: “This is life eternal, that they 
should know thee the only true God.” He knew God, 
and all things were by him seen for evermore in their 
relationship to God. Flowers that blossomed, birds 
that poised themselves on wings, little children at their 
play, all the affairs of life, he measured them all by 
his knowledge of God. And that means that to him 

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for evermore the secret of beauty was holiness, and the 
issue of holiness was beauty. “Blessed are the pure in 
heart, for they shall see God,” a saying from his lips, 
the crystallization into a saying of his mind, his con- 
sciousness. He moved through all the days of his 
earthly life, those days of revelation for you and for 
me; and in teaching and in action, the deep underly- 
ing inspiration and passion of all was his knowledge 
of the beauty of holiness. That was so moreover, and 
supremely, in his going to his cross, and was vindicated 
in his resurrection. 

He not only knew God; he knew man. What a 
remarkable declaration that is that John makes, at 
the end of what we call chapter two, in his gospel. 
Quite incidentally it flashes upon the page, but what 
an essential revelation it is: “He needed not that 
anyone should bear witness concerning man; for he 
himself knew what was in man.” That is a great 
generic declaration. He knew man. I see him take his 
way through earthly life, always dealing with man as 
spiritual in essence, as capable of having positive and 
direct first-hand dealing with God. Therefore in spite 
of all his failure, he saw man as capable of redemption, 
worth saving at any cost. That is the meaning of 
the cross. It is first the vindication of the beauty of 
holiness, refusal to have any compromise with sin. It 
is secondly, a revelation of the value of man; in spite 
of all his sin, he is worth dying for. 


III 
Yet once more. The mind of Christ was therefore 
mastered by his consciousness of the glory of realizing 
the possibility of lost things. ‘He emptied himself.” 
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“He humbled himself.” “He endured the cross, despis- 
ing the shame.” “Therefore doth the Father love me, 
because I lay down my life.” ‘This authority received 
I from my Father.” I would speak with reticent rever- 


ence, and yet resolutely, when I declare that he counted , 


it his chief glory to empty himself for the rescue and 
ransom and redemption of men; that he might restore 
them to the beauty of holiness. 

“We have the mind of Christ.” I am saying nothing 
at all about the value of philosophic inquiries outside 
the realm of human failure. Let these inquiries be 
reverently continued, but the church of Christ has this 
revelation of his mind in that realm of human failure, 
as its deposit; she thinks with him, she feels with him, 
she chooses with him, the church knows the beauty of 
holiness, feels the possibility of lost things, chooses 
the call of the cross to rescue the lost things. 

That is the point of our halting. That is the point 
of our wonder, our wistful wonder. I am inclined to 
say, and some of you are inclined to say, all that is 
true of the church ideally, but not actually. If that 
shall be said, I shall reply it is so actually, if not 
actively. It is actively so when the church is loyal 
to her own deepest consciousness, and disloyalty to 
that consciousness destroys capacity. Here is the true 
test of church membership. Do I see things as Christ 
does? Am I really convinced of the beauty of holiness? 
Can I see in those faces battered and bruised and 
spoiled by all the sin and shame and sorrow, the 
possibility of the recovery of the image and likeness 
of God, and the recreation of beauty? Do I feel that 
the greatest glory that can come to a human being is 
that of sacrifice, in order to the recovery of lost men 


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and women to the beauty of holiness? The sacra- 
mental host of those who share the life of the Christ, 
share the light, and share the love, and share the 
liberty. The light of Christ in the soul, is Christ’s 
vision of things; his thought, the beauty of holiness. 
The love of Christ in the soul is Christ’s feeling, emo- 
tion, passion; his conviction of the possibility of the 
recovery of the lost and debased. The liberty of Christ 
in the soul is Christ’s freedom for the exercise of voli- 
tion on the highest possible level: his franchise of self- 
emptying service. | 

That is the mind of Christ. The church has it, 
because she shares the life of Christ; because she is 
indwelt of the spirit of God, whose office it is first to 
take of the things of Christ and reveal them, and then 
to make them part of the personality of all her mem- 
bers. By that spirit her members are born; by that 
spirit they are indwelt; and in proportion as we are 
yielded to the energizing spirit, we have the mind of 
Christ. 


IV 


What then are the responsibilities of the church if 
these things be so? To proclaim his ideal, the beauty 
of holiness; to announce his confidence in the salvabil- 
ity of the lost; and to express his activity in sacrificial 
service. 

The church is called for evermore to proclaim his 
ideal, the beauty of holiness. Out of the heart and 
core and center of her wisdom, she is to declare that 
truth is the foundation of order, that justice is the law 
of life, that righteousness is the principle of action; 
and that there can be no beauty that lives and lasts 

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The Mind of Christ 


and flames and grows except the beauty that comes 
out of purity of heart. We must for evermore pro- 
claim the message of the mind of Christ, which is the 
message of the supremacy and sovereignty of holiness, 
in order to the realization of beauty. 

But she must also announce to men his confidence. 
A Christian man or woman cannot look into the eyes 
of a depraved man or woman, and think hopelessly. 
Oh, but there are cases! Yes, I know. I think I have 
seen the cases you have; but the measure in which this 
Christ is dwelling in me and masters me is the measure 
in which when all the light of hope seems to have gone 
out, I see that depraved soul radiant with possibility. 
That is Christ’s vision, and if I speak of the indi- 
vidual, I do not forget that the individual is for ever 
microcosmic. I declare today when I look out upon 
the world with all its turmoil, with all its strife, with 
all its reversion to past types of badness, I still sing. 
I still sing confidently. Because in Christ I see the 
possibility of the regeneration of the individual, I see 
also the assurance of the ultimate realization of God’s 
divine order. It was that outlook that made Milton 
say, and say so well, we 


Argue not 

Against heaven’s hand or will, nor bate a jot 
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer 
Right onward. 


It was that vision of the ultimate through the Christ 
that made Robert Browning sing of greeting the 
unknown with acheer. The consciousness of the Christ 
is the consciousness of the possibility of the recovery 
of lost things. 

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V 

Let me say very bluntly, and almost brutally: all 
that is very cheap, unless or until we come to the final 
thing. The mind of Christ is the mind that empties 
itself, or that constrains himself to self-emptying; and 
it is our duty today—our duty, hard word, harsh word 
—may I be forgiven, and dismissing it say it is our holy 
privilege to share with him the travail that makes his 
kingdom come. We are true to our philosophy, to our 
wisdom, to this great deposit, to this mind of Christ, 
when our lives are self-emptied, expressing themselves 
in service, service tinged with the fine red blood of 
sacrifice. | 

“We have the mind of Christ.” Would to God that 
we might be delivered from spending time either 
taking part in, or listening to the discussions of the rul- 
ers of this world; and that there might be given to us 
a new enduement of power, enabling us to go out to 
the world with this great mind of Christ; holiness as 
right relationship to God, the condition of all beauty 
and all order; the possibility of realization of God’s 
sreat ideal, in spite of the darkest outlook; and there- 
fore a consuming passion that nothing salvable shall 
be lost, if by the touch of our hand, or the ministry of 
our life at a sacrificial point, we can do anything to 
rescue. So moving out into the world, having the mind 
of Christ, yielded to the mind of Christ, revealing the 
mind of Christ, we shall serve our generation by the 
will of God. 


JOSEPH Fort NEwTon 


A Texan, born in 1876, Dr. Newton was educated at 
Hardy Institute, University of Texas, and the Southern 
Baptist Theological Seminary at Louisville, Kentucky, with 
later studies under Josiah Royce at Harvard. He was 
ordained a Baptist minister at the age of eighteen and 
preached while pursuing his college courses. His first pas- 
torate after leaving the seminary was at First Baptist 
Church, Paris, Texas, followed by a brief ministry in 
First Christian Church in the same city. In 1898, he 
became associate to Dr. R. C. Cave in the Non-sectarian 
Church, St. Louis. In 1901 he founded and was for eight 
years minister of the People’s Church, Dixon, Ill., removing 
to the Liberal Christian Church, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 
1908, where, during a ministry of eight years, he became 
widely known as preacher and university teacher in the 
State University of Iowa, where he had a popular lecture- 
ship in English literature. Dr. Newton was a founder of the 
National Masonic Research Society and the first editor 
of its journal, The Builder. His book, The Builders, 
appeared in 1914, and has since been translated into four 
languages, including a Syrian edition published in the 
ancient city of Damascus. In 1909 he wrote David Swing: 
Poet-Preacher, a study of a teacher whom he greatly loved 
and from whom he learned much. The following year 
appeared Lincoln and Herndon. His first book of religious 
essays appeared in 1912 entitled, The Eternal Christ. 

While at the crest of success in his inland city far 
removed from the metropolitan centers whose pulpits are 
sounding-boards carrying their preachers to nation-wide and 
international fame, a strange thing happened. He was 


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called to what is generally conceded to be the most con- 
spicuous pulpit in English-speaking Protestantism—that 
of the City Temple, London. The story of this call reads 
like a romance. The slender thread of initial contact 
between the far-away mid-western American preacher and 
the powerful pulpit of England’s metropolis, was the casual 
reading of a sermon of Dr. Newton’s in The Christian Cen- 
tury by an influential vestryman of the Church. Impressed, 
he wrote to Cedar Rapids asking for other sermons of Dr. 
Newton’s, and these sermons convinced the London com- 
mittee that a preacher of rare distinction, worthy of suc- 
cessorship to Joseph Parker and Reginald J. Campbell, 
lived in the distant city previously unheard of by any of 
them. He was called, and he accepted, beginning his min- 
istry almost at the moment of America’s entrance into the 
war. During the stressful days of the conflict, and for 
nearly two years after the Armistice, he preached in the 
spirit of an ambassador of good-will from the United States 
to Great Britain. In 1920 he returned to America as min- 
ister of the Church of the Divine Paternity, New York 
City, whose pulpit he resigned in September, 1925, to 
become rector of the Memorial Church of St. Paul, (Pro- 
testant Episcopal), Overbrook, Philadelphia. Dr. Newton 
does not regard his change of ecclesiastical relationship as 
a thing of significance, so far as his own convictions are 
concerned. He regards all the churches as parts of one 
church of Christ. In his theological attitude he would be 
described as a liberal evangelical. 

Of his later books mention should be made of An Ambas- 
sador, The Sword of the Spirit, The Religious Basis of a 
Better World Order, Preaching in London, Preaching in 
New York, Some Living Masters of the Pulpit, together 
with an annual volume entitled Best Sermons, two issues of 
which have appeared. Dr. Newton is a contributing editor 
to The Christian Century. He received the degree of Litt.D. 
from Coe College and that of D.D. from Tufts College. 

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THE PRESENCE 
By JosepH Fort Newton 


“Did rot our heart burn within us, while he 
talked with us by the way?”—Luke xxiv, 32. 


If the Bible were about to be destroyed, and we 
could save only one flying leaf, what page would it 
be? Each of us would try to snatch from the flames 
many a precious passage, scenes as familiar and holy 
as the home in which we were born, dear and blessed 
words that have in them the music of eternity and the 
echo of voices long hushed. It would be hard to select 
from among the great psalms—the twenty-third with 
its melody of faith like the Christmas shepherds, the 
fifty-first with its final candor of sin confessed, the one 
hundred thirty-ninth celebrating the everywhereness 
of God. How could we part with the fifty-third chap- 
ter of Isaiah, the story of the nativity, the sermon on 
the mount, and the great parables? What a host of 
hands would try to rescue the fourteenth chapter of St. 
John, to which millions have turned in hours of lone- 
liness or heart-break, and found help for today and 
hope for the morrow. 

But, honestly, if I could have just one page of the 
Bible, and only one, much as I should mourn my loss, 
I would keep the story of the walk to Emmaus. No 
other scene in the book of vision, whose leaves are for 
the healing of human hearts, is so perfect an example 


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of that naturalization of the unseen which is the goal 
of religious insight and experience. It has a restraint, 
a dignity, a delicacy, and withal an unutterable grace, 
which give it every mark of authenticity, uniting the 
authority of beauty and the vividness of spiritual real- 
ity. Its human color and its awful yet tender dis- 
closure blend as naturally as the earth and the sky on 
the horizon. It never fails me. Weary, dejected, or 
beshadowed, I have only to turn to that page and 
there is a human accent, as of a friend standing near. 
The words thrill me. A radiant personality touches 
me. Ages of doubt and cruelty may lie between, but 
the light shines and there are footsteps by my side. 
There the great religious ideals become real; there 
theology melts into fellowship. 

Of all pages of the Bible none is more profoundly 
satisfying, none more luminously revealing. It is an 
epitome of Christian history and experience, in which 
the very genius of our faith finds focus. No theism, as 
such, meets our need. Philosophy is ice; religion is 
fire. Something deep in me approves the proposal 
to write underneath every painting of the crucifixion 
the one word—Adequate; and when to the cross we 
join the pilgrim Presence on the road to Emmaus, for 
me it “unlocks the gates of significance and sets free 
the fountains of strength.” It is enough: I know that 
behind the dark tragedy of life there is a great ten- 
derness, in its deepest shadow a brooding love, in its 
else bewildering enigma a divine meaning to which all 
facts contribute. The road toward the sunset is no 
longer lonely and forsaken; and at the end there is not 
a black silence, but a sacrament—the bread of blessing 
broken by a hand broken for me. 


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Hence the center of my thought today, as always, is 
the figure standing at the cottage door at Emmaus, in 
the falling daylight, making as though he would go 
further. One thing is certain: the living Christ and 
his continuing ministry in the lives of men created 
Christianity, and nothing else can keep it alive. Not 
his teachings, not his works of mercy, but he himself 
is the soul of our faith—his personality its revelation, 
his character its verification, his presence its inspira- 
tion. Not to his personal charm or his social idealism, 
but to his victory over death and his sway over the 
lives of men from the Unseen, must we trace the 
renascence of wonder, the heroic and glad enthusiasm, 
the new and haunting kind of goodness which marked 
the morning years of the church. No ideal, no vague 
and lovely memory can explain an experience so pro- 
found, a power so creative of the highest values, an 
influence so redeeming in the life of man. 


I 


The scene on the road to Emmaus is not a bit of 
ancient history; it is a picture of an abiding reality. 
The pilgrim Christ is an eternal contemporary of 
humanity, and the record of his faith is the story of 
his journey adown the centuries; a commentary on the 
words, “And he appeared unto them in another form.” 
In every age he has made his advent, revealing himself 
where the struggle for justice is fiercest, where human 
need is most piteous, where the tragedy of life is sharp- 
est; only, alas, he is not recognized, and men do not 
know who is leading them until he is leaving them—to 
continue his great errand in the world. Like the dis- 
ciples of old we would fain dwell in a cottage and keep 

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Christ with us; but that cannot be. He will abide 
with us long enough to interpret the scroll of prophecy 
and bless our bread of fellowship, but if we would 
abide with him we must be pilgrims too, following 
where no path is, save that made by his feet. Ever- 
more the wind is on the heath, and the great adven- 
turer beckons a laggard church to follow him in our 
new, clever, critical, agitated, erotic, wistful and hurry- 
ing age. 

Today, as at Emmaus, he is with us as the great 
Companion in a day of appalling spiritual loneliness, 
in the wake of a tragedy which has left us sad, dejected, 
and unhopeful. Never were human bodies so jostled; 
never were human souls so much alone. The poignant 
need of the human heart today, as each of us can 
testify, is for a friend stronger than man, more tender 
than woman, and more intimate than either, whom 
time does not change nor death take away. At times, 
in rare moments, the sea which washes between soul 
and soul—“unplumbed, salt, estranging”’—rolls away, 
and we meet spirit with spirit; but only for a brief 
time, so profound is our isolation. In every life there 
are hours when those nearest to us seem strange and 
far off, hours of temptation, of depression, of misgiv. 
ing, when no human hand ean help. Somehow, in a 
way known to no other, Jesus can enter, the doors being 
shut—a dear familiar friend—into the innermost cham- 
ber of our hearts. It is true; some of us know it as we 
know nothing else! 

Such a fellowship is especially needed in a day when 
we see that the purpose of life is the development of 
personality, and yet the tendency of thought is toward 
the impersonal. The ideas of God set forth in recent 

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philosophy leave us wondering whether he is more 
than personal, or less. For years, while the mind has 
been struggling with the difficulties of divine personal- 
ity, the heart has suffered a sad loss of rich, warm, vivid 
fellowship with God. Faith fades, prayer dies on our 
lips, religion falls to a lower octave in the presence of 
the impersonal, in a universe which has become so vast 
that every man by himself is lonely in it. Here, no 
doubt, is the explanation of the Christward tendency 
in poetry, drama, and fiction, so remarkable in the last 
twenty years. Here, too, lies the secret of the redis- 
covery of Jesus in recent scholarship, leading us 
through the Jesus of history to the mind of Christ— 
the one satisfying revelation. It is an awakening, in 
response to a deep need, of what Goodwin called “the 
instinct for Christ”; a passionate yearning for a vivid 
sense of the personalness of God. Happy are they who 
know, as all may learn in the fellowship of Jesus, if 
they be humble and obedient of heart, the truth of 
the lines: 


Whatever way my life decline, 

I felt, I feel though left alone, 
Thy being working in my own, 
The footsteps of thy life in mine. 


II 

Nay, more. Christ is with us today, as on the road 
to Emmaus, as the one adequate Interpreter of an 
otherwise ambiguous and unintelligible universe—its 
walls pushed back into infinity, its depths an abysm no 
mortal can fathom. The pastor of the Pilgrim fathers 
urged his flock, at parting from them, to expect further 
light to break forth from the word of God. In our 


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day the word of God written in nature has been read 
in a way to dazzle and appall, revealing new light of 
truth and new shadows of mystery. It is a stupendous 
scene which science unveils—a universe vast, orderly, 
unfolding—now luminous and lovely, now dark and 
terrible, in which man seems as insignificant as a mote 
floating on the evening air, and as fleeting. What won- 
der that reflective minds are troubled about the value 
of life and the validity of its highest ideals. Their 
concern is not whether they are sinners, but whether 
there is anything or anybody in the universe who cares 
enough about us to even frown upon our sins. 

The number of wistful worshipers at the altar of the 
unknown God in our day is very great. Many of them 
remain in the church, as the thing to do, carrying on 
by the momentum of memory and habit; but they are 
sorely perplexed about the meaning of life. The Rus- 
sians feel more acutely than we do, perhaps—as the 
stories of Tchekhov reveal—the agony of life without 
God. Ideas become deceptive, ideals a mirage, work 
unmeaning monotony, and life a tedious tale ending in 
ennui, futility, and the fatigue of despair. Devices of 
escape are many. Some take refuge in music, others 
in revolt, others in daring speculative thinking, others 
in giddy-paced pleasure, and others in realistic novels, 
acrid and unhappy—the sternest, darkest and most 
pathetic of tales. In less degree the same mood is felt 
among us, deepened by the war and the ultimate issues 
evoked by its horror, as well as by the ever-present 
mystery of sorrow and suffering, tragedy and death, 
and the tedium of secular things. Such is the poignant 
need of the sure word of faith which Jesus brings us, 
alike by his life and his vision. 

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Now, consider. Out of the fathomless depths of the 
universe, amid a clash of forces we may not reckon, in 
the fullness of time there emerged the life, personality 
and character of Christ. He was neither alien nor 
exotic. He was one of us, growing up out of the heart 
of humanity, a babe, a boy, a man, browned by the 
sun, wet by the rain. Three swift and vivid years he 
taught and was put to death; but he still lives, of all 
world-powers making for the higher life the most 
potent and persuasive. What must the heart of the 
universe be out of whose bosom was born this shining 
figure of heroic moral loveliness! Years ago Meredith 
asked: 


Into the depth that gave the rose 
Shall I with shuddering fall? 


Surely not. Still less should we be terrified by dark 
thoughts of fatality, or blind fears we know not nor 
can name, in a universe out of which arose that life 
of love and pity and joy, revealing what God is and 
what man was meant to be. 

Midway in history he appeared, a man among men, 
living in purity, power, and poise, walking in liberty 
by the law of love, faithful and friendly, facing the 
worst and finding the best, as if to show us, historically, 
the meaning of life, and, prophetically, the goal toward 
which the whole process of life is moving. His advent 
marked a new era, dividing time into before and after 
—like the emergence of personality out of animality: 
not another man but another kind of man. In him 
life passed from selfishness to otherness, and love 
came to perfect flower, with the result that his per- 
sonality has acted thereafter as an elemental, trans- 
forming energy in the life of man. Like moral radium, 

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in contact with him men of all ages, types, races and 
ranks have found that they are set free from inner 
dualism, and made masters of life and death by the 
moral power that is in him. Here is the reality, 
attested by ages of experience, in heroic love, in holy 
character, in human service, upon which our faith 
rests, to expound which some contrive theologies and 
others sing anthems. As Markham put it in a quatrain 
he sent me recently: 
Here is the Truth in a little creed, 
Enough for all the roads we go: 
In Love is all the law we need, 
In Christ the only God we know. 

No wonder our hearts burn within us along the way 
with such a pilgrim to keep us company, in whom the 
mighty aspirations of the heart find answer. Christ is 
the Yes of God to all the eager, aching, wistful yearn- 
ings of humanity, the token of our hope, the evidence 
of our faith. In him love finds fulfillment, and 
becomes the prophet of unknown revelations. Our 
lonely longings, our dim intuitions, our vague mysti- 
cisms—even our dark superstitions—become radiant at 
his touch. There is that in him which takes the stain 
of sin away, and heals the deep hurt of death, as sing- 
ing centuries testify. His words—so bright with color 
—have strange cadences in them, and far-sounding 
melodies, evoking old, half-forgotten memories of the 
soul and echoes of ineffable things. Here is one who 
knows the restless human heart and its mysteries; and 
about him are gathered, as he predicted, the weary 
and heavy-laden whom life has defeated, those who 
have culture without faith and knowledge without 
hope—the sick of soul, the palsied of will, and those 


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The Presence . 


who have learned the failure of success—seeking, as of 
old, the forgiving word, the healing hand, which makes 
them know that they may still hope, for the impossible 
is true! 


III 


There are three stages in the experience of Christ, 
and they are not unlike the three great periods of 
Christian history. In youth we are ardent rational- 
ists, lovers of logic, eager to measure the mystery of 
Christ with the tape-line of reason. Theology is thrill- 
ing, its majestic conceptions fascinate us. It is like 
the five formative centuries, in which the issues of 
faith were fought out and thought through in a fash- 
ion hardly equaled since. Then it dawns upon us that 
a man may believe all the creeds and not be a Chris- 
tian; may believe in the resurrection of the body and 
yet be dead of soul. Slowly, through the teaching of 
sorrow and the deepening of life, we are drawn into 
the mystic way, urged by something hitherto unknown 
in our nature. In company with the shining ones we 
follow an inward path, finding new wonders in the 
fellowship of Christ. It is like the middle ages over 
whose long still years there hung a nimbus of romance, 
and out of whose broodings there grew personalities 
fragrant with a wondrous aspect: a Francis preaching 
to the birds, an a-Kempis “in a little nook with a 
little book.” It was the poetry of faith, and it brought 
a bit of heaven to earth. 

At last, by a process untraceable, one comes to find 
the highest wisdom, the deepest joy, the sum of the 
duty and discipline of life, and the ideal of its dedica- 
tion, in the words: ‘Follow me.” Ever the reason 

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toils to fathom the revelation of God in Christ. Ever 
the mystic quest goes on. But life becomes simpler, 
more real and rewarding, at once easier and harder, 
more complex in its demands yet more compelling in 
its persuasions, as we seek to make the will of Christ 
our own. It is like the practical, realistic, fact-loving, 
social age in which we live today; and as the ages agone 
found in Christ satisfaction for their needs—finding 
him where he found them—so our age will find in “the 
Son of Fact” the supreme realist it seeks. Alike to 
mystic, rationalist and ritualist comes the challenge, 
“Tf any man will do the will of God he shall know 
of the teaching.” And the refrain echoes in every 
heart: “Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the 
things I say.” For such an adventure we need all 
inspiration—mystical communion, lofty worship, noble 
thought—but these must issue and bear fruit in the 
union of those who love in the service of those who 
need. 

Once more, as at Emmaus on a sacramental eventide, 
the living Christ makes as though he would go fur- 
ther; and in that adventure lies the way out of the 
muddle into which the world has wandered. No 
timid, tepid Christianity is equal to the demands of 
our age. Old issues are dead, old sectarianisms are 
obsolete. It is anew world in which we live, with new 
insights, new outlooks, and we need an altogether other 
dimension of faith more magnanimous, more heroic: 
the higher unity of things which differ, and “the eye 
of a fresh mind upon our tangled time.” There must 
be a greater faith, in which the vision of the mystic 
and the skill of the scientist shall unite in a new syn- 
thesis of insight and endeavor. Science gives us facts 


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and laws. Christ gives us meanings and values. These 
two must work together in a fraternity of fact and 
faith, love and law, if we are to have a triumphant 
life. One panacea after another has been tried and 
found wanting. Something deeper, more daring, more 
creative and comprehensive, is needed. Let us give 
ourselves to it, following him who is the Life that inter- 
prets life, until the day is ended, 


And without a screen at last is seen 
The Presence in which we have always been. 


Half a life ago Solovyof, a Russian seer, wrote an 
apocalypse in which he forecast the final battle between 
materialism and spirituality—the ultimate issue of his- 
tory. Slowly, in his vision, the world divides into two 
fundamentally hostile camps, on one side Christ, on 
the other anti-Christ. A final effort is made to com- 
promise, as in the days of Constantine, but, fortu- 
nately, it fails. A dire crisis ensues, a desperate battle 
shakes the world; and in the depth of that dark night 
the church, so long divided into sects, is welded into 
one fellowship. In the end the hordes of anti-Christ 
are overwhelmed at Armageddon; but not until Jew 
and gentile are found fighting side by side, defending 
the eternal mysticism by which man lives, singing “the 
song of Moses and the Lamb!” Is it a fancy or a 
prophecy of the things that lie ahead? 


Shakespeare is dead, and will not come 
To question from his Avon tomb, 

And Socrates and Shelley keep 

An Attic and Italian sleep. 


They will not see us, nor again 
Shall indignation light the brain 


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Where Lincoln on his woodland height 
Tells out the spring and winter night. 


They see not. But, O Christians, who 
Throng Holborn and Fifth Avenue, 
May you not meet, in spite of death, 

A traveler from Nazareth? 


[ 264 J 


Merton StacHuer RICE 


Few men have looked upon their pulpit ministry as a 
higher ministry than the office of a bishop. But it is gen- 
erally recognized that at the last two general conferences 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the pastor of the 
Metropolitan Methodist Church of Detroit could have been 
elected to the episcopal honor had he not decisively dis- 
couraged the activities of his friends. Dr. Rice is a preacher, 
primarily and instinctively a preacher; and his love of 
preaching to a flock of his own, from Sunday to Sunday, 
rather than to various flocks in the itinerating ministry 
of a bishop, is so strong in him that it is doubtful whether 
he would be fully happy were he to exchange his pulpit 
throne for the bishop’s chair. Be that as it may, all won- 
der at his hesitant attitude toward the proffer by his breth- 
ren of a bishop’s title will immediately vanish if one looks 
at the stupendous work in Detroit of which he is the head. 
Metropolitan Church is just completing an edifice on North 
Woodward Avenue costing a million and a half dollars. A 
marvel of architectural art, it 1s the last word in variety 
and adequacy for housing a modern church’s multifarious 
activities. Nothing appears to be left out. All this is a 
testimony and tribute to the twelve years of Dr. Rice’s 
leadership of that particular flock. ‘Flock’ is too modest 
a word, perhaps. It is nothing less than a throng that waits 
on his ministry on Sunday morning and evening. His popu- 
larity is city-wide. No great name worn by some imported 
preacher from outside Detroit can be counted on to draw 
so huge a crowd at the climax service of the holy week series 
as can the oft-tested and proved name of Dr. Rice. His 
preaching is virile, forthright, without airs. There is a 
touch of Talmage in him, yet entirely without those bizarre 


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effects which Talmage loved to produce. Perhaps he is 
more like the late Bishop Quayle, who was his friend and 
whose mantle seems to have fallen upon Dr. Rice. The 
sermon spread before us in these pages is typical. It is 
more restrained than was Quayle’s preaching. The rhetoric 
is not so tropical, the emotion not so riotous. But that it 
is charged with tremendous emotional content even the 
dullness of the printed page cannot conceal. Dr. Rice car- 
ries On an inspiring tradition in homiletic art which if it 
-should slip from our hands would leave the pulpit and the 
church poor indeed. 

He was born in Kansas in 1872. Baker University gave 
him his education and three degrees—B.S. in 1892, M.S. in 
1896, and LL.D. in 1920. Upper Iowa University gave him 
the D.D. degree in 1901. He studied law at the University 
of Michigan, 1893-4, but abandoned his purpose of prac- 
ticing law and entered the Methodist ministry. His first 
“charge” was at Westphalia, Kansas. Subsequently he was 
pastor at Fontana and Ottawa, Kansas; West Union and 
Towa City, Iowa, and Duluth, Minn. He went to Detroit 
in 1913. His books are Dust and Destiny, The Expected 
Church, Preachographs, and The Advantage of a Handicap. 


[ 266 ] 


THERE IS NOTHING 
By Merton 8. Rice 


“And (he) said to his servant, Go up now, look 
toward the sea. And he went up, and looked, and 
said, There 1s nothing. And he sad, Go again, 
seven tumes.”—1 Kings xviii, 48. 


“And (he) said, There is nothing. . . . And he 
said, Go again.” That furnishes the point of real 
interest to me in this famous story. It is a quick- 
drawn sketch of faith, faced by a lack of evidence, 
which refuses to allow such a report to be final. There 
is always an illogical conduct before faith. It is for- 
ever drawing its conclusions just beyond its observa- 
tions. “There is nothing.” ‘Go again.” 

These are days of expert observation. Never were 
men so sure of what they could see, or could not see, 
as they are now. Their report is set in a confidence 
of finality too. When it is in, there is no appeal. The 
scientific report has a bearing that brooks no dispute. 
It has presumed upon its accuracy with a conduct that 
has made marked impression upon religion, and the 
“oo again” response of faith has not had a very large 
recognition of late. “There is nothing,” has sounded 
so conclusive. There is a very clear call today for a 
faith that will be content to be just faith. We need 
a vision in religion that will catch the true testimony 
of an “evidence not seen.” Something that will vin- 


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dicate the great apostle’s definition of what faith 
really is, is the prime need of the hour. 

One of the very interesting, and surely one of the 
most indicative-of-the-times books, that has been pub- 
lished within the recent past, carries the very apt title, 
“A Faith That Enquires.” It is in every way a strong 
book, and always in defense of a faith that eagerly 
hunts for a reason for. its position. It goes inquir- 
ingly. It not only is not afraid, it is determined 
rather to know whatever is to be found out. The 
treatment is purely modern in its interpretation of 
faith, and puts that wholesome flavor upon the con- 
duct of religion today which it must never allow to be 
questioned in a scientific age, namely, that there can 
be no fear in facts for true faith. Religion can never 
be built up on the crumbling idea that anything 
true can ever hurt it. A policy of concealment is not 
permissible in genuine Christian evidences. 

There is, however, something unsatisfactory in such 
an attitude of faith. There seems ever to be an ele- 
ment of suspicion, and a lack of genuine confidence 
in the manifest eagerness of such inquiry. It is a mod- 
ern edition of the apostle Thomas, who doubtless pro- 
duced a very fine result in Christian service, and helped 
disclose some valuable evidence by what he required, 
but he never wrote his own faith in the highest terms, 
as long as he stood with shaking head, declaring that 
he would never believe in a resurrected Lord until he 
could actually thrust his bold fingers into the torn, 
tender palms of him whose death had broken down his 
whole interpretation of what the true Messiah should 
be. There is a finer conduct of faith than inquiry. It 
is not at its best with a question-mark for its guide. 

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There Is Nothing 


There is an uncompromising confidence that charac- 
terizes faith at its best. 

“There is nothing.” It is the short, conclusive report 
of the servant of Elijah, who had been sent out to a 
favorable point of observation, to look for a cloud 
in a sky that had been so long cloudless that any sort 
of a cloud would be news. There was not much enthu- 
siasm in the servant as he went, for he could see enough 
of the sky from where he was to settle his own con- 
clusions. It was a quite listless sort of a report he 
brought back that time, that was to prove but the 
introductory report, as he said, “There is nothing.” 
He was startled at the sharp answer his report stirred, 
as his master replied, “Go again.” 

The attraction in this incident to me lies in our use 
of it as an approach in studying the content of faith. 
The situation is tragic in liability. Faith stands chal- 
lenged by facts, a thing not uncommon, and a liable 
essential in the victory of every soul’s faith. Can I 
hold my faith when all signs fail? That is a fair ques- 
tion. It isallright to inquire. Send the servant out to 
look. Tell him to look well too. But don’t hold your 
faith with so slight a grip as to endanger it if the in- 
quiry brings a negative report. Faith may need the 
challenge of a contradictory report. I am sure the very 
fact of present-day emphasis on inquiry is to prove to 
be the refining fire of a finer faith that shall come out 
of our super-inquisitive tendency and show itself pure 
and permanent in its ministry. 

Written all around this text I have chosen, is the 
tragic story of one of the most crucial periods of 
Elijah’s life. For more than three years the people of 
suffering Israel had turned their sun-browned faces 

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up to a brazen sky hoping for some sign of rain. The 
earth had been swept clean of all vegetation by the 
hot breath of a continuous drouth. The springs and 
pools had all been licked dry. The King had given 
Obadiah his servant, and the governor of his house, a 
special commission to seek out all fountains and pools 
—peradventure grass enough might be found to save 
the lives of the horses and mules of the royal stables. 
Day after day, week after week, month after month, 
year after year, the skies refused to bring relief. You 
who have never experienced a real drouth of even one 
season cannot imagine the torture there is in looking 
upon parched fields. The flying, choking clouds of 
dust! The dead rustle of the dried foliage shaken 
by hot winds. The panting cattle, driven long dis- 
tances once a day for a drink in some wasting pool of 
a one-time river. The unflecked dull sky that burns 
with the concentric rays of a merciless sun. 

The people, at first angry with Elijah, began to wear 
down to distressful appreciation of their helplessness. 
Distress has often been a constructive process in reli- 
gious inclination. It seems so easy to forget God while 
brooks run full, and flowers bloom to fresh fragrance, 
and rich crops hang heavy afield. It may be a neces- 
sary process in growing character, to drive folks, at 
times, out of their little pastures of selfishness into 
which their prosperity has blindly led them. Knock 
a man’s earth props out from under him, and see how 
quickly he looks for God. I am sure many of these 
people changed their attitude toward Elijah as they 
went choking along in the dust, month by month. The 
Lord was able to change his servant’s boarding place, 
and release the ravens, and send Elijah over to Zare- 

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There Is Nothing 


phath to be the unexpected guest at the table of a 
poor widow woman, whose wasting barrel of meal he 
renewed, and kept supplied. 

Events come on hurrying feet now. The great meet- 
ing in challenge with the false prophets was convinc- 
ingly concluded, and the acclaimed victor arose, and 
said in welcome confidence, “Behold, the sound of 
abundance of rain is in the land.” It was surely the 
word of a prophet. The keen ear of faith alone could 
hear rain then. None other could detect it. They 
listened intently too. There was not a cloud. They 
would believe such a testimony when they could see 
great lowering clouds and hear the welcome roar of 
thunder on the hills. 

But the man of God, whose ear heard beyond the 
sound of the fields, declared he could hear the sound 
of an abundant rain. And so saying, he withdrew him- 
self to the top of Mount Carmel to pray. I have 
wished we had the record of some of those prayers. 
In a matter-of-fact manner he said to his servant, ‘Go 
now, and look over toward the sea for the coming of a 
cloud.” How good a cloud does look—just any cloud— 
in a season of drouth. The servant was not gone long. 
He swept the heavens with an easy glance that was 
sure before he looked, and came back in a most unin- 
teresting manner to say, ““My master, there is nothing.” 

“Go back and look again, I fear you did not look 
with care.” To his knees the prophet fell, and as he 
awaited the returning message, he poured out his soul 
to God. It was not long, however, for to the servant 
the trip was a mere confirmation of what he had 
already reported. He came back with a step more 
firm than it had been before, and with an inflection 

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in his sentence that carried somewhat of a sense of 
triumph he said, “Master, there is nothing.” 

“Go again!” came the command of the challenged 
faith. “Maybe you have been too expectant. Don’t 
look now for a storm. Remember, you are only look- 
ing for a cloud.” Again the prophet prayed. After a 
somewhat longer absence the servant came and said, 
in the manner of carefully formed conviction, “Master, 
there is nothing. I tell you there is nothing.” Good 
servant that he was, I fancy that he suggested then, 
as a possible offering in encouragement, “Shall I go 
once more?” 

“Go again,’ was the unfaltering word. I have 
thought, as the servant climbed again to the point of 
lookout, that there might have been in his soul a won- 
dering how he could find somehow an encouragement 
for his famous master. But the brazen sky held no 
sign, and there was no possibility of concealment, for 
he could sweep the whole horizon. “There is noth- 
ing,’ once more the report was made. 

There is an ancient tradition that this servant was 
the son of the widow of Zarephath, the boy whom 
Elijah had raised from the dead. I like the story any- 
how, and the way the boy acted in this repetitious test 
bears evidence that he was no ordinary servant. Again 
the fifth time he ran to look while his master prayed. 
The returning feet of the messenger startled Elijah, 
and he looked up to ask, ‘““What did you see?” “There 
is nothing!” 

“Well,” said the prophet, “you know it takes a cloud 
some time to form into visible shape, and by the time 
you get back there again you will likely make out the 
outline of a cloud. There is one forming out there. 

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There Is Nothing 


It is now either not quite dense enough to see, or else 
you have grown so used to a bare sky that you look 
for no other sort. Go now again.” 

Shortly he came stumbling back, almost carelessly 
now. Mocked, perhaps, he felt, by the constant repe- 
tition of cloudless skies, and he said with utter weari- 
ness in his voice, “There is nothing. Not a spot in the 
sky. My eyes are good, too. I am speaking the truth. 
There is nothing.” 

“Go again!” answered the faith whose challenge had 
been but the means of brightening it. “Go now and 
look carefully along that misty line where sky and sea 
meet yonder. You know there are some clouds that 
he below the horizon; clouds that have not yet thrust 
up heads of recognition. Maybe you can find a poimt 
of higher vantage. Over to the right there it looks a 
bit higher than where you have been. Try that. Stand 
on tip-toe now and see if you cannot make out the 
lines of a cloud out there.” 

Yonder on the very highest point he stands. Away 
to the west lies the great sea. The sun was sinking 
again as it had for so many months toward a cloudless 
evening. Suddenly the eye of the tired watcher caught 
something not visible before. Just a bit of unevenness 
on the horizon’s edge. He shaded his face from the 
reflecting glare. It’s a cloud. Not a big cloud. No 
larger than a man’s hand. But I have not been cau- 
tioned as to size. All I am to report on is facts. It 
may seem a small vessel in which to carry a drink to 
so thirsty a land as is this. But it is a cloud. I will 
report. Walking hurriedly back, he ran a little as his 
faith increased. He interrupted his master even at his 
prayer, and said with a new inflection in his voice, 


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“Yes, I saw a cloud. It was no larger than my hand. 
It is coming up out of the sea.” 

Elijah cared nothing about the size of the cloud. 
He knew that God is forever growing great things out 
of seeming littles. Without even going to look for him- 
self, or to confirm the report, he said in active com- 
ment, “Arise quickly. Run and tell Ahab the King 
that he get his chariots and rush home that the rain 
stop him not.” And hurrying for shelter themselves— 
you know the story of how it rained. 


I 

I learn here that even in the face of explicit prom- 
ises, the Lord for a time may allow us to see no signs. 
Elijah had been told that rain would come again only 
on his own word, and he had all the reason of his faith 
to believe it. But, cherishing the promise, he must 
still linger, and wait, and pray, and believe, straight 
into the repeating report of a negative observation. 

There is significant spiritual truth in this for this 
peculiarly confident day of ours, that prides itself on 
its ability to discern the sky. There is oppressive influ- 
ence on spiritual life in every scientific negative. Faith 
seems to have grown faint in many places, and to 
accept the ordinary observations of the sky as the 
conclusive reports for religion as well. There may be, 
in most of us, an instinctive impulse that will express 
itself in prayer once, for something, and maybe in 
anxiety, and in hope that is born of anxiety, we can 
pray twice. But when three and four times we have 
had to be told there still is visible absolutely noth- 
ing, we are ready to quit. It is so easy for men and 
women with eyes to walk by sight, and it is so hard 


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There Is Nothing 


to walk by faith. ‘There is nothing,” is a report to 
chill faith. 

I incline to the judgment that this is to be the finest 
religious contribution which we are to receive from 
this super-scientific age of ours, a challenge to true 
faith. 

It is a great thing to hear Elijah say as he looked 
out over those parched fields, and up into those dried- 
out skies, “I hear the sound of abundance of rain.’ 
We must never get delay and denial confused in our 
interpretation of faith. It is not a denial for our 
answers to be delayed. Though we cannot see a 
cloud, we have the promise, and that is enough. They 
had no weather bureaus in those days. Had there 
been one, there would have been flying from the staff 
on Mt. Carmel a square white flag. The people would 
have said, ‘“There’s no use praying against that, wait 
till they change flags anyhow. There will be plenty 
of uncertainty even then to make the risk large 
enough to try faith.” But Elijah did not pray by the 
barometer. He stood on the promises of God. 

The world has always had to stand in respect before 
the character of genuine faith. The Bible carries the 
fact often. Fascinating figure of patient faith, that 
poor stumbling blind man whom Jesus met along the 
road one day. The very mixing of a bit of mud to paste 
upon his sightless sockets was in itself a severe test. 
What a super-test it must have been, as with mud- 
spattered face he felt his dark way through the crowd, 
going blindly on to do a strange thing he had been 
told to do. All sorts of things must have been said to 
him as he went. What a mark for ridicule he must 
have presented! Many souls would perhaps have 

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made the start, simply because of the desperation of 
blindness. But few of them would have gone 
stumbling on toward the designated pool, and not 
have stopped to dig off that humbling clay with cha- 
erined disgust. If this Jesus could cure me, or really 
desired to cure me why did he not do so? This thing 
of sending me along this trying way with mud in my 
blind eyes, to be the butt of all this ridicule, is too 
much. Many souls would have argued thus, and would 
have received the short-sighted congratulations of the 
logical crowd along the street, as they turned in at 
some wayside basin to wash the humbling mud away, 
rather than go on to the pool; and then would have 
lifted again their sightless faces to grin a sickly 
embarrassed grin out into the same persistent dark- 
ness they knew so well. But thisman went on. Faith- 
fully he stumbled out the last step along the way to 
the place Jesus assigned, and there found, to his great 
joy, that everything God commands finds full justifi- 
cation in its performance. 

God’s ways do not always burst clear upon our 
vision. It is entirely for our good, that the cloud is 
not always to be seen the first time we scan the hori- 
zon forasign. Along this rugged pathway the genuine 
adventurers of faith have always come. The apostle 
Paul, that fierce night of shipwreck, when everything 
had gone to pieces, and all feared they were doomed 
to destruction, stood amid sinking hull and broken 
spars and said, “Be of good cheer, for I believe God, 
that it shall be so as it hath been spoken to me.” 

Dost thou believe? Then stand thou to that belief. 
Never mind the cloud. Listen for the rain, which can 
be heard in the very promise itself. 

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va 


The second deduction I would make here is that 
God’s promises are better than signs in the sky. The 
real spirit of faith is concerned but very little with 
signs. It knows the sign will come, not as a cause of 
faith, but as a credential of faith. Don’t get them 
crossed. What more do I want than God’s word? 
His promise is my incentive. On it I take no denial 
though all reports agree against me. There is noth- 
ing! What a silencer that report has been. 

If men were looking for signs, a cloud as large as a 
man’s hand would have been mockery. That drouth 
had been across whole years. The vessel that brings 
relief to such desperation must not be a little thing. 
The Church of God on earth must take a bolder stand 
in the expectant promises of God. We have been 
watching too diligently for signs, and our endeavors 
have been constantly hampered by a demanded 
encouragement. We want religious business to be 
made just as humanly plain in its action as any of 
the business we construct on our own market reports. 
A man said to me recently, with the inflection of a 
confident criticism in his sentence, ‘“‘What are the signs 
that we are doing any good in the missionary field?” 
I answered him quickly that the visible signs are today 
genuinely abundant. But in doing our God-directed 
duty we are not to move on signs. We would be just 
as much obligated today if through all the years the 
sacrifice of the watchers and workers had brought no 
report whatever. If the Christian church had moved 
only on signs it would still be in the narrow place of 
its birth. 

During one of the most trying and desperate days in 

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the early period of American history a man wrote Ben- 
jamin Franklin in pessimistic conclusion, “The sun of 
liberty has set.” The great old patriot who was not 
afraid of the dark wrote back, “Then light up the can- 
dles.”” Sometimes God does hold back all signs, to test 
our faith. We are expected to presume on the promises. 
Our faith has been timid, and has ventured only as 
far as we could clearly see. The world awaits, and not 
only awaits, but challenges a confident church; a 
church that laughs at the report, “there is nothing,” as 
a mere sign men have always dared read into a barren 
sky, and declares triumphantly to every negative find- 
ing, “There is something! We have God’s word.” 
March on, O church of God! Cloud or no cloud, we 
hear the sound of abundance of rain. 


Til 


My final observation is that failure is an unknown 
experience for faith. The temperature of faith is 
always the same, sign or no sign. The report comes 
in, there is nothing; faith answers, there is God, and 
that’s enough. This is faith’s test, can it wring con- 
fidence out of a cloudless sky? Can it be so unfalter- 
ing that even the seventh time it can calmly reply to 
the messenger, “Go back again, for surely if you want 
to see a cloud there is one out there somewhere.” We 
are not to have faith in God because of a cloud. Any- 
body could do that. We are to have faith which will 
insist that clouds must come because of it. The sky 
is sure one day to have the credentials of faith 
stamped upon it. But faith must be strong enough 
to stand secure without a cloud in sight. 

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I am not called upon to explain the actions of my 
God according to the laws of nature I have thus far 
been able to decipher, and of which I feel reasonably 
sure. Very many of the explanations I have tried to 
read would make God out as a huge sleight-of-hand 
worker, who makes use of natural laws just beyond our 
range of knowledge, and that he merely fools our 
vision. Explainers thus have busied themselves 
drawing parallels in what we know today that would 
have been incredible to the generation just gone. Thus 
by human process they seek to reduce so-called miracles 
to the simple acts of a master-mechanic before a class 
of dull pupils. As for me, I have never expected to 
find out God with human wisdom. When I believe him 
God, my idea of understanding him vanishes. There 
is a passage somewhere in the writings of Sir Hum- 
phrey Davy that expresses the desire of a truly great 
mind when it stands before the consciousness of its 
own easily realized limitations, “I envy no quality of 
mind or intellect in others, be it genius, power, wit, 
or fancy; but I would prefer a firm religious faith 
before every other blessing.” 

The true ministry of Christian experience has puf 
this confident note into life, and even down to the very 
last report that can come; when the closing shades of 
death seem to screen all vision, so the watchers in the 
attendant gloom say there is nothing, even there we 
find that faith has not failed, and has transformed 
groping into vision. 

I know not where His islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air; 
I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond His love and care. 
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Say you there is nothing? Go and look again. Go 
back again, and again, and again. For against such a 
report I will forever match my deathless faith in God. 
We have God. 


[ 280 ] 


FREDERICK FRANKLIN SHANNON 


In the very heart of Chicago, at the center of the “loop” 
district, a section crowded on six days of the week as is 
perhaps no other spot of the earth, and deserted on Sun- 
day mornings, there is a church with no church building, 
but a true church of Christ for all that. It was born in a 
heresy trial. The famous trial of David Swing resulted 
in Professor Swing’s leaving the Presbyterian ministry, fol- 
lowed by a large group of the members of Fourth Presby- 
terian Church, of which he had been pastor. They estab- 
lished Central Church, with regular Sunday morning serv- 
ices at Central Music Hall. With the passing of Swing came 
Newell Dwight Hillis. With the departure of Hillis to 
Brooklyn came Frank W. Gunsaulus, who moved the church 
to the famous Auditorium Theatre, where he preached until 
1920, having a short while before his resignation moved 
the services to Orchestra Hall. Dr. Gunsaulus was asked 
by his trustees to find his own successor. He named a young 
preacher whose fame had been steadily growing, chiefly 
through the publication of his sermons in the Brooklyn 
press and in several volumes which had come from his pen. 
Dr. Shannon was that man. He is a homiletic genius. 
Sermon making is almost an instinct with him. He fell 
into step in the illustrious succession of pulpit masters with 
a humility that was matched only by his courage. The city 
listened to him at the start with those misgivings which are 
inevitable to people who had been sitting at the feet of 
such masters as had gone before him. Steadily the num- 
ber of his hearers has grown until today he preaches regu- 
larly to a congregation that comes near filling the great 
building. How many thousands besides hear him on the 
radio can only be imagined. His sermons are poetical, some- 


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times fanciful, but always soundly practical and genuinely 
helpful. Hundreds of people who have heard him on the 
radio in their distant homes pour out from the Chicago 
hotels where they are spending Sunday and make their 
way to Orchestra Hall to hear him in the flesh. His min- 
istry is thoroughly evangelical. He makes no bid for 
popularity by sensationalism or the wielding of an irre- 
sponsible free-lance. His fellowship with his brother min- 
isters of the ecclesiastical churches is full and fruitful. 

Dr. Shannon was born in Kansas in 1877, on a farm. 
He was educated in Webb School, Bell Buckle, Tenn., and 
at Harvard. His beginning ministry was in Methodism 
as pastor at Logan, West Virginia, from 1899 to 1900, and 
at Grace Church, Brooklyn, New York, from 1904 to 1912. 
Called to the Reformed Church on the Heights in Brook- 
lyn, he remained there until 1920, when he went to Chicago. 
Books, the very titles of which suggest the quality of their 
contents, have come from his hand as follows: The 
Enchanted Universe, The Breath in the Winds, God’s Faith 
in Man, The Infimte Artist, A Moneyless Magnate, The 
New Greatness, Sermons for Days We Observe, etc., etc. 


[ 282 ] 


WALKING IN GALILEE 
By Freperick F. SHANNON 


“After these things, Jesus walked in Galilee: 
for he would not walk in Judea, because the Jews 
sought to kill him.”—St. John vii, 1. 


But why this refusal to walk in Judea? Was it lack 
of courage on the part of Jesus? If courage be the 
quality of mind which enables one to look danger 
and difficulty in the face without fear, Jesus had cour- 
age to the uttermost. It would be difficult to think of 
Jesus as afraid of anything or any being in any world. 
Be assured, then, it was not for lack of courage that 
the Master remained away from Judea at this particu- 
lar period. Rather, as the context shows, the time was 
not yet ripe for him to go into Judea and die. He had 
much hard and glorious work yet to do, and neither 
the taunts of his brethren nor the threats of the Jews 
must be allowed to stop that work. 

“Christ,” said Napoleon, “proved that he was the 
son of the Eternal by his disregard of time; and all his 
doctrines signify one and the same thing—Eternity.” 
This may be true; but I think, as here, the Master’s 
regard for time and “times” is most profound. “My 
time,” he said to his brethren, “is not yet come; but 
your time is always ready. The world cannot hate 
you, but me it hateth; because I testify of it, that its 
works are evil.” What a judgment day is that for any 


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soul or society! You do not have enough of moral 
resistance to cause the evil world to even consider you! 
When a spiritual judgment doom like that falls, there 
is bound to be an awful crash. No wonder M. Renan 
regards the first part of this chapter as a “gem of his- 
tory.” But I think it is more than that; it is at once 
full of history made and full of history in the making. 
If the future is only the past entered by another door, 
it may be well for us to enter this spacious textual 
door and glimpse how, by walking in Galilee, the doors 
of the past and the future open and close in Christly 
majesty. 


I 


Walking in Galilee, consider that the divine is 
humanized in a transcendent fashion. “Jesus walked 
in Galilee.’ How importantly this fact tugs at our 
spiritual consciousness! We believe that God may be 
found in all provinces of his universe; this is an out- 
standing element of our Christian faith. To perceiv- 
ing minds and understanding hearts, the divine exposes 
itself in star and cloud and wind and rain. As Chris- 
tians, let us boldly say we give no hostages to panthe- 
ism, or to any form of nature-interpretation or nature- 
worship. We claim all that is beautiful and true and 
good in all systems, and more; and in that more lies 
the inexhaustible fullness which God in Christ is con- 
tinuously pouring into our ever-breaking mental molds. 
The fact is, we are in danger of making entirely too 
much of the molds. A mold is good and useful so long 
as it fulfils its purpose. But when a scientific, phi- 
losophic, or theologic mold gets in the way of reality, 
the mold is bound to crack. And does not the history 


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of thought show that, at the proper time, it is neces- 
sary for existing molds to be broken to make room for 
larger and better? As the Master suggests, the old 
wine bottles are incapable of containing the new wine 
of thought which God is everlastingly making in heav- 
enly wine vats for his children. Thus, it is our duty to 
be on the lookout for fresh disclosures of the divine in 
all realms. 

Yet, after wandering through many goodly kingdoms 
and discovering much spiritual gold therein, we invari- 
ably come back to Galilee to see how uniquely the 
divine is humanized. Whatever the cosmos has to ' 
say about God—and it is very much ndeed—we are 
firmly grounded in the belief that it cannot say enough 
to satisfy the needy souls of men. Seldom has this 
truth been more goldenly sung than in Francis Thomp- 
son’s ode, ‘The Hound of Heaven.” Based upon one ’ 
of the great psalms, and also growing, doubtless, out 
of the poet’s own experience, he shows how a human 
runaway attempts to hide from God in the mysterious 
pockets of the natural world. But it is all exhaustingly 
vain and futile. “The Hound of Heaven” bays upon 
the fugitive’s track until, panting and broken, marred 
and charred, he falls into the Everlasting Arms. 

So, I love to walk in Galilee because the divine is 
so satisfyingly humanized there. “Jesus walked in 
Galilee.” 

Here taken in its dry, bald literalness, the word 
Galilee is not especially melodious; for Galilee simply 
means a circuit or “district.” But when I begin to 
walk around with Jesus in Galilee, I catch glimpses of 
the divine behavior so melting, so inspiriting, so illu- 
minating, so life-giving, so tenderly human, that I have 

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to pause and say: “Behold, God is in this place, and I 
know he is here!” I go to Nazareth—Nazareth, with 
its flat roofs and narrow streets, nestling “like a hand- 
ful of pearls in a goblet of emeralds” among the hills. 
Did not Jesus walk the winsome ways of his boyhood 
there? And that carpenter shop in Nazareth—ah! 
what an honest day’s labor within those walls! What 
well-wrought yokes were turned out by that shop! I 
think that each yoke was as perfect as any flower of 
the field or any star in the spaces. 

And Cana—is not Cana in Galilee? Jesus walked 
to Cana to attend a wedding. While the festivities 
were going on, the wine gave out and the host was 
embarrassed. Then did the divine behave so beauti- 
fully that, ever since, weddings have held a deeper joy 
for responsive souls. Turning the water into wine, 
Jesus did suddenly what nature and man do leisurely. 

Look at your atlas again. You will find that Caper- 
naum is in Galilee. One day a centurion sends a mes- 
sage to Jesus, asking him to restore his servant, who is 
ill. The Master starts at once upon his mission of 
mercy; but he is met on the way by messengers from 
the army-captain, disclaiming his own unworthiness 
that Jesus should enter hishome. “Just say the word,” 
he said, “and let my servant be healed.” Hearing this, 
Jesus marveled at the centurion’s faith; and in honor 
of that faith, he flashed a message of recovery along the 
constitution of the universe. 

Look at your map once more. Nain is in Galilee. 
As Jesus, his disciples, and a large crowd draw near 
the gate of the town, the dead son of a widowed 
mother is being carried out. Seeing that weeping 
mother, the Lord drew near and said to her: “Do not 

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weep.” Ah! Master, dost thou not understand that 
this fountain of tears has been opened by death? Yea, 
none but God so well understands! ‘Then he went 
forward and touched the bier; the bearers stopped, and 
he said, Young man, I bid you rise. Then the corpse 
sat up and began to speak; and Jesus gave him back 
to his mother.” Walking in Galilee, I have seen more 
than one funeral broken up. Beyond the power of 
words, the divine is humanized in Galilee—wondrous, 
golden, glorious Galilee! 


We may not climb the heavenly steeps 
To brirg the Lord Christ down; 

In vain we search the lowest deeps 
For Him no depths can drown. 


But warm, sweet, tender, even yet 
A present help is He; 

And faith has still its Olivet, 
And love its Galilee. 


II 


A second reason why I love to walk in Galilee is 
this: Since Jesus walked there, Nature is profoundly 
meaningful. In his “Peter Bell,’ Wordsworth discloses, 
alas! the nature-blindness of multitudes: 


A primrose by a river’s brim 


A yellow primrose was to him, 
And it was nothing more. 


Now, I find that a lily is not just a lily, and nothing 
more—in Galilee. “Consider the lilies of the field, 
how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; 
yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was 
not arrayed like one of these.” Is not the essence of all 


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thought here? Your Platos and Bacons and Kants, 
with their intellectual brethren of the ages past and 
to come, are not able to overpass this immeasurable 
horizon of thought and insight. For God is at work 
amid the untoiling, unspinning lilies. Consider how 
they grow! Get at the roots of a growing lily and 
you will get at the roots of a growing universe. The 
God who embroiders clusters of stars into the robe of 
space weaves atoms into the petals of a lly with more 
than Solomonic splendor. Greater wonder than this 
has not been disclosed to the seeking mind of man. 
Let us forever dismiss the un-Christian idea that God 
either stoops or condescends when he writes his signa- 
ture upon what men thoughtlessly call the mean and 
commonplace. The fact is, God could not be God 
and fail to tabernacle in the ordinary; and, therefore, 
let us hasten to add, there is no ordinary; we merely 
make ourselves mentally ordinary by giving the word 
so large a place in our vocabulary. And in asserting 
that the lily is arrayed in more than regal splendor, 
Jesus is not using poetic language alone. ‘There is 
poetry, to be sure, poetry that will last as long as the 
idea of poetry itself; but there is more. There is a 
passion for reality that cuts into the heart of things. 
“In short,” said the late President Burton, of the Uni- 
versity of Chicago, “Jesus was the first great exemplar 
of the scientific spirit as the most enlightened men of 
science understand and practice it today. He faced 
facts squarely, made them, rather than opinions, how- 
ever ancient and honorable, the guide of his thinking 
and the basis of his action, set facts in relation to one 
another, penetrated beneath their surface to find their 
meaning, brought imagination into service, and to all 
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that mere induction or deduction could prove, added 
an estimate of values and a strong element of faith. 
Slowly the world is learning that this is the best way 
to think, and all the progress of our modern times is 
due to this method of thought.” 

Yes, let me reiterate it. Nature is thrillingly alive 
and meaningful in Galilee. A bird is not just a bird— 
in Galilee. “Behold the birds of the air, that they 
sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns.” 
“Well, what of that?” rejoins the atheistic wiseacre. 
“Have not untold generations known that much, and 
more, about birds? Moreover, it is hardly to be 
expected that a bird should exhibit as much foresight 
as human beings.” But hold on, my friend! You 
have ignored the most important fact regarding birds. 
It is not bird-nature, primarily, that Jesus is talking 
about, but God-nature. “And your heavenly Father 
feedeth them.” 

Moreover, the sun is not just the sun—in Galilee. 
Astronomers tell me an almost incredible story about 
the sun—how far it is from the earth; how its size 
overwhelms even as its light dazzles and warms; how 
it furnishes life and light to its own immediate family 
of revolving planets; how, also, it is constantly throw- 
ing off heat into other realms of space—why and where 
nobody knows; how it is gradually shrinking in size 
year by year. A number of things the scientist tells 
me about the sun, for which I am grateful. But, 
walking in Galilee, I learn something else about the 
sun; I learn that the sun is just a vast solar pen held 
in the hand of “Our Father who art in Heaven.” With 
his wondrous sun-pen, he writes the language of the 
seasons in grass and trees and birds. 


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I learn, also, that rain is not just rain—in Galilee. 
Dipping my finger into Lake Michigan, I find that a 
drop of water still clings to the finger tip. But within 
that single drop hides a physical unity with the great 
deep which no power can destroy. If God hangs the 
earth on nothing, he hangs the seven seas together by 
a drop of water. But suppose I follow the advice of 
the physicist and multiply that single drop into a 
glass filled with drops of water—what then? Why, he 
tells me that if I magnify each molecule in my glass of 
water to the size of a grain of sand, I shall have enough 
sand to build a road three miles wide and seven hun- 
dred feet deep all the way from New York to Los 
Angeles. Yet, walking in Galilee, I find something more 
arresting still. I learn that rain is not just rain in 
that lovely land; for crossing its frontiers, I hear one 
say: “Your Father sendeth rain on the just’—Ah! if 
I stopped there, I should be caught with a blistering 
lie on the tip of my tongue! How reads it? “Your 
Father sends rain on the just and the unjust.” Rain 
is not just rain—in Galilee. 

While he was still with us in the flesh, I frequently 
wrote a letter to Bishop William A. Quayle. If con- 
fession is good for the soul, I desire to register this 
public confession: I wrote these letters not so much 
that Quayle might get a letter from me, but, rather, 
that Shannon might get a letter from Quayle! I wrote 
my blessed friend one of those subtle, double-dealing, 
back-handed letters, knowing him to be so unsophis- 
ticated and simple that he would never suspect my 
ruse. Sure enough, my villainy worked! And here is 
the evidence in this extract from the letter I feloniously 
stole from Quayle’s golden heart: 

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“T wish you had been here at Dream Haven these 
last few weeks. God has been here in all his beauty. 
His first Christmas could not have been so fair. Dream 
Haven is a garden of about three acres. Our village 
is hidden, even in winter, save for the tower of a col- 
lege building, giving an Oxford effect that I love. Our 
trees are young enough to be dreamy, old enough to 
be of size to hold the eye and make admirable winter 
etchings with their winter boughs. The ground has 
been, and is, white and wonderful; and when, as last 
night, the sunset is wine-drenched, the snowy fields 
stretching near and far, hills crumpling up on the hori- 
zon, our young tree-branches etching on a sky crimson 
as a Turner, a body could well have a rapture in his 
heart. God was in this place. Jacob had no monopoly.” 

I think Quayle must have learned the meaningful- 
ness of Nature by walking much in Galilee. Likewise, 
I think my friend, Thomas Curtis Clark, must also 
take long walks in Galilee. Otherwise, I hardly see 
how he could have written this great sonnet, which he 
calls “Knowledge”: 


They list for me the things I cannot know: 
Whence came the world? What hand flung out the light 
Of yonder stars? How could a God of Right 
Ordain for earth an ebbless tide of woe? 

Their word is true; I would not scorn their doubt, 
Who press their questions of the how and why. 
But this I know: that from the star-strewn sky 
There comes to me a peace that puts to rout 

All brooding thoughts of dread, abiding death; 
And too I know, with every fragrant dawn, 

That Life is Lord; that, with the Winter gone, 
There cometh Spring, a great, reviving Breath. © 
It is enough that life means this to me; 

What death shall mean, some sunny morn shall see. 


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Ill 


There is a third reason why I love to walk in Gali- 
lee: Human life is of infinite value there. Everywhere 
else men, women, and children seem so heartbreakingly 
cheap. Go to Egypt, go to Assyria, go to Greece, go to 
Rome, and inquire how much human beings are worth. 
No matter what their philosophy may be, their practice 
will tell you that souls. made in the image of God are 
so paltry and cheap that they are auctioned off to the 
highest bidder for less than a mess of pottage. Oh, 
the degradation, the horror, the shame of it all! Go to 
England of a century ago and listen to the testimony 
for the year 1818 as reproduced by Dean Inge: “I have 
copied the official record for the Lincolnshire assizes for 
that year. A retired soldier entering a house and steal- 
ing a coat and jacket, death. A boy of fifteen breaking 
open a desk and stealing £1, 3s, 6d, death. A boy of 
seventeen entering a house with intent to steal, death. 
A boy of nineteen firing an oat stack, death. Two 
young men for the same offense, death.” 

But whatever you do, don’t tarry too long back in 
the ages of antiquity, of medievalism, or even of a 
century past. Go through the modern world and see 
what scant value is placed upon human life. Ask 
Russia, Germany, Italy, France, England, and America 
how much a mere mortal weighs in the scales of nation- 
alism, of war, of industry, of politics, and lo! he seems 
to be so exceedingly light that the beam is scarcely 
made to tremble at all! Once a man demonstrated 
the sensitiveness of his scales for me at the New York 
electrical show. He laid upon the mechanism a small 
piece of white paper. Instantly the register responded. 

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Then he took the same bit of paper, wrote my name 
upon it, and the register immediately showed the dif- 
ference—the fractional added weight—of the name 
written with a lead pencil! Well, as we walk up and 
down the centuries, a human being seems to weigh 
just about as much as the lead expended in writing 
one’s name on a sheet of paper. Widely, indeed, is 
Montaigne’s outlook reflected by pilgrims in the cen- 
tury-old roadways. ‘He is always charming,” says 
Professor Saintsbury, “but he is rarely inspiring. except 
in a very few passages where the sense of vanity and 
nothingness possesses him with unusual strength.” I 
have italicized the latter part of the statement that we 
may readily lay our mental fingers upon the chief 
source of inspiration to one of the most prolifie of all 
minds known to literature. Yes, Montaigne is always 
charming, but rarely inspiring, concludes the great 
critic, except in stray passages where the vinegar and 
vulgarity of life—for that is what it all comes to— 
command him with unusual strength! 

But, walking in Galilee, I find that one soul weighs 
more than the whole world. I find that children are 
so precious that their angels do always behold the 
face of God. I find that a shepherd has a hundred 
sheep. Only one out of the hundred is lost, but the 
shepherd rests not until, searching the wilderness, he 
finds the lost one. Returning home, he calls his friends 
and neighbors, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have 
found my sheep which was lost. I say unto you, that 
even so there shall be joy in heaven over one sinner 
that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine right- 
eous persons who need no repentance.” God is like 


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that in Galilee. A woman has ten pieces of silver 
and loses one. She sweeps the house and seeks dili- 
gently until she finds it. Calling in her friends and 
neighbors, she asks them to rejoice with her because 
she has found the one lost piece. “Even so,” says the 
Master, “I say unto you, there is joy in the presence 
of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” 
God is like that in Galilee. A father has two sons. 
One gets lost at home, the other gets lost away from 
home. The father waits and watches for the return 
of the one lost in the far country, while he lovingly 
endures the one already lost in the near country. At 
last the far-country stranger comes back and makes 
his penitential confession. But the father, forgetting 
to argue theology in a downpour of tears, said to his 
servants: “Bring forth quickly the best robe, and put 
it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on 
his feet; and bring the fatted calf, and kill it, and let 
us eat, and make merry: for this my son was dead, and 
is alive again; he was lost, and is found.” And to the 
sullen,angry, near-country lost son, the self-same father 
said: “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that is mine 
is thine. But it was meet to make merry and be glad: 
for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and 
was lost, and is found.” How to manage a household, 
part of which gets lost at home, and the other part gets 
lost away from home—that, I submit, is a tremendous 
problem. But the Christian God can do it—and God is 
like that in Galilee. 

Still, I must not forget the latter part of my text: 
“For he would not walk in Judea, because the Jews 
sought to kill him.” No; it is not yet time for him 

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to walk the way of death in Judea, but he will walk the 
road of atonement in due season. And not fear, but 
love, will tune his steps to the goings of redemptive 
agony. “Therefore doth the Father love me, because 
I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one 
taketh it away from me, but I lay it down of myself. 
I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take 
it again. This commandment received I from my 
Father.” Oh, yes, he will go out of Galilee into Judea 
to die. Watch him move thither like a sweet wind 
of salvation, blowing across the No Man’s Land of 
human life! Just south of Galilee is Samaria—to all 
orthodox Jews that unorthodox, unpatriotic province! 
“And he must needs pass through Samaria.” And 
why? Well, it is the most direct route—and my Lord 
is grandly direct—always, everywhere. That is one 
reason for his going through Samaria. But there is 
another: one soiled woman is waiting for him in 
Samaria, and he will talk through that soiled, sinning 
woman to the soiled and sinning ages. Arrived in Judea, 
he gently smites the dead eyes of two blind men in 
Jericho with waves of revealing light. Arrived in 
Judea, he stops at Bethany long enough to stop the 
mouth of that age-long old braggart named Death. 
Arrived in Judea, he takes up his cross and makes 
for the skull-shaped hill. Yea, arrived at Calvary in 
Judea, when the day is all black and plashed with 
bloody rain, he forgets to die long enough to forgive 
his enemies even while he gives hope and consolation 
to a dying outcast. 

Thus, my walk in Galilee comes to a hushed and 
holy pause. Standing with that blind minstrel whose 


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soul was full of light, I ask him to lend me the golden 
ending of his unending song: 


O Cross that liftest up my head, 
I dare not ask to fly from thee; 

I lay in dust life’s glory dead, 

And from the ground there blossoms red 
Life that shall endless be. 


[ 296 


Rogsert EvLIoTT SPEER 


Dr. Speer was born to Christian leadership. From the 
day of his graduation at Princeton Theological Seminary, at 
the age of twenty-four, to the present time, he has been 
secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. 
In his student days at Princeton University he was the 
marked man in both scholarship and personal influence. 
His connection, as a junior secretary, with his denomina- 
tional missionary organization marks the date of a new 
epoch both of practical expansion and missionary vision 
for the entire missionary enterprise in all the churches. 
He envisaged the missionary task in new dimensions and by 
his writings and addresses and policies has lifted the world- 
wide objective of Christianity to a higher level. 

Positive in his views, and sturdy in his support of them, 
the quality of his spirit has made him a kind of personal 
common denominator of churchmen of all varieties of con- 
viction. His nature is too broad for partisanship. He 
thus stands in the fellowship of American church life as an 
irenic and constructive force, equally loved and followed 
by both conservatives and liberals. When the Federal 
Council of Churches, emerging from the war period, faced 
the new day with the misgivings arising not only from the 
confusion naturally inherent in the situation but from the 
deplorable failure of the ambitious Interchurch World 
Movement, it was to Dr. Speer the leaders turned, in the 
belief that under his presidency the fragments of the grand 
ideal of Christian unity might be gathered up again and 
refashioned in the consciousness and program of the 
churches. His acceptance of the responsibility for the 
quadrennium, 1920-24, is believed to have established the 
Federal Council on a sure foundation. In his denomina- 


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tion, too, Dr. Speer exercises this gracious ministry of con- 
ciliation, holding diverse minded partisans together between 
whom but for his presence irretrievable divisions would 
almost certainly occur. 

Born in Pennsylvania in 1867, he has made the world his 
parish. On all the mission fields he has come into closest 
contact with the missionaries and the native leaders, both 
Christian and non-Christian. He made tours of visitation 
to the missions in Persia, India, China, Korea and Japan 
in 1896-7, to all the fields of South America in 1909, to 
Japan, China, the Philippines and Siam in 1915, to India, 
Irak and Persia in 1921-22. With Dr. John R. Mott he 
shared the major responsibility in preparation of the ecu- 
menical missionary conference held in Edinburgh, Scotland, 
in 1910. He was president of the conference on Christian 
work in Latin America, held in Panama in 1916. As chair- 
man of the general war-time commission of the churches 
his labors were abundant and fruitful during the period of 
conflict. 

Yale University conferred upon him the degree of A.M. 
in 1900, and the University of Edinburgh honored him with 
the degree of D.D. in 1910. This latter recognition pos- 
sesses added significance in that Dr. Speer has never been 
ordained to the ministry but classifies himself as a layman. 
Books have come from his hand as follows: The Man Christ 
Jesus, The Man Paul, Missions and Politics in Asia, 
Remember Jesus Christ, Studies in the Book of Acts, Christ 
and Life, The Principles of Jesus, Missionary Principles and 
Practice, A Memorial of Horace Tracy Pitkin, Missions 
and Modern History, The Marks of a Man, Christianity 
and the Nations, The Light of the World, South American 
Problems, Studies rn Missionary Leadership, The Stuff of 
Manhood, The Gospel and the New World, The New Oppor- 
tunity of the Church, Race and Race Relations—a prodi- 
gious output, almost a book a year since 1896! 


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THE CHRIST WHO LIVES IN MEN 
By Ropert E. SPEER 


“T am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; 
yet not I, but Christ liveth wn me; and the life 
which I now live in the flesh I live by the farth of 
the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself 
for me.”—Gal. 11, 20. 


Sometimes it is given to a man to say it all in just 
a few words. I read not long since a list of such great 
sayings in each one of which the man had really gath- 
ered up the whole of his life, and through which he has 
been long remembered. There was Lincoln’s word in 
his Cooper Institute speech, ‘Let us have faith to 
believe that right makes might, and in that faith let 
us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.” 
There was the famous saying attributed to Mr. Cleve- 
land, “Public office is a public trust”; and a long list 
of such great and characterizing words as these. It is 
one of these words, greater far than any that were on 
that list, that I speak here. It is the word which one 
would pick out of all the sayings of Paul as most com- 
pletely gathering up the fullness of the man’s life and 
bringing home to us the very heart of his conviction 
and of his message. It is the one word in which more 
perfectly than in anything else that he ever wrote or, 
as far as we know, ever said, Paul gathers up the mean- 
ing of his new and his real life. 

And what a life it was! The names of the great 
statesmen and merchants and scholars of his time have 

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almost all of them been forgotten. The few that we 
remember best we remember chiefly because they had 
some contact with the life of Paul and with the great 
enterprise which had been begun and to which he had 
consecrated his career. This was his supreme interest, 
how to live the deepest and most powerful life that he 
could; how not merely to endure his life, how not 
merely to accept it, but how to live it at its maximum 
of meaning and of content and of influence and of 
power. And to everyone of us in some grave and 
earnest hour of our lives, the question has come which 
Paul answers for himself and for every other man, 
as to what life is, where it springs from, where it is to 
be wrought out, what the inner secret of it is to be, 
how we, coming these long generations after, can per- 
haps be laid hold of by just such principles and powers 
as laid hold of him, and be enabled to do in our own 
time, please God, the same necessary work that he did 
in his. 
I 


What we have here first of all is his explanation of 
where his life came from, the spring and the source 
of it. “I am crucified with Christ.” His life began 
in death, in death and life with Christ. I suppose all 
living must begin in some such place as that. “The 
vine from every living limb,” wrote Garibaldi’s friend, 
Ugo Bassi— 

The vine from every living limb bleeds wine. 
Is it the poorer for that spirit shed? 
The drunken and the wanton drink thereof. 
Are they the richer for that gift’s excess? 

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Measure thy life by loss instead of gain, 

Not by the wine drunk, but the wine poured forth; 
For life’s strength standeth in love’s sacrifice, 
And whoso suffers most hath most to give. 


Christianity began there. It had to die before it 
ever lived. It came out of the black shadows, out of 
a grave where Christ’s faith was laid away with his 
body. Christianity came forth out of death into life 
and power. ‘Thou fool,’ writes Paul in another of 
his letters, “that which thou sowest is not quickened, 
except it die.’ And what is he doing but catching 
up our Lord’s own great word, “Except a corn of wheat 
fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone’? The 
life of man has to begin in shadow, the life of power 
and strength in Christ’s death. And we do not need 
to flinch from the deepest and the most mystical inter- 
pretation of all that is contained in that idea of Paul’s. 
Elsewhere he unfolds it. “What shall we say then? 
Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God 
forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any 
longer therein? Know ye not, that so many of us as 
were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his 
death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism 
into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the 
dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should 
walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted 
together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also 
in the likeness of his resurrection; knowing’ this, 
that our old man is crucified with him, that the 
body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we 
should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from 
sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that 


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we shall also live with him: knowing that Christ being 
raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no 
more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died 
unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto 
God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead 
indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus 
Christ our Lord.” 

And this is not to be thought of as a curiosity of 
exceptional religious experience, as a category of 
antiquated ideas in which a man who belonged to a 
different race and a different time cast a religious 
experience which is to be depersonalized and to be 
made simply moral for us. This is the real fact about 
a life of fullness and power and reality to the end of 
time. It begins in death with Christ to sin, that it 
may live with him unto righteousness. 

And yet this does not mean that one is not prepared 
to cast the meaning of Paul’s words also in real social 
and ethical terms for our own life now. Being cruci- 
fied with Christ and taking up out of that death a new 
life with him must mean for us, if we put it in those 
terms, that we accept his attitude toward life and fix 
duty as the highest of all our moral values; that we 
take up his spirit of mind with regard to our enemies 
and make forgiveness a fundamental principle of our 
own hearts; that we hold fast to his faith in the sure 
triumph of innocence even over wrong and fear; that 
we cherish his undying hope of the possibility of a 
better world even against the background of murder 
and of crime. When Paul says that he died with 
Christ and came out through that deep experience to 
the living of a new and powerful life, he meant things 
like these as realities in his daily relationships with 

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men. The cross was the mark of the beginning of that 
new and real life. 

There is a story of a company of men who had been 
gathered in the earliest days of our participation in 
the war. The whole group could not be sent over to 
the other side at once, and every man was eager to go; 
at last they decided that they would put a lot of papers 
in a hat, one for every man, and they would put crosses 
on as many papers as there were men who might be 
sent, and every man who drew a paper with a cross 
on it was to be allowed to go. When it was all over 
one lad who belonged to the group wrote home to his 
father, ‘Father, if I ever prayed in my life, I prayed 
today that I might draw a cross.” He wanted the 
life that bore that symbol and mark and all that it 
opened up in the possibility of service and of sacrifice. 
Do we want to find our way into a life that can do in 
our time what Paul’s life did in his, that can leave its 
deathless scar on the soul of humanity as Paul’s life 
left his, his healing scar? Well, here is the beginning 
and the foundation of it all for us as for him: “I am 
crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live.” 


II 


Paul goes on next to tell us where this life of his 
was to be lived, the area and sphere in which the great 
battle was to be waged and the great work was to be 
done. Not in any quiet islands of the blest elsewhere 
than here, not in some far-distant heavenly age with 
another environment from that in which men actually 
live in our real world. “I am crucified with Christ: 
nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me 

. . the life which I now live in the flesh.” 


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We have been asking ourselves these last few years 
over and over again whether, after all, Christianity 
is a practical thing; I mean, the original idea of Christi- 
anity, or whether it has not to be vacated in some 
way, some of its old ideals toned down, some of its 
old demands reduced, some of its old ideals bedimmed. 
Can Christianity be lived, we ask, here and now in 
this meat of our body, in the midst of all this mael- 
strom of evil that whirls us around by day and by 
night? Can Christianity be lived? 

That is exactly Paul’s ideal about his life. “The 
life which I now live in the flesh.” It is the glory of 
the human body and it is the glory of Christianity that 
Christianity can be lived inside a man’s flesh, that 
there are no passions here that are right that cannot 
be purified and consecrated, and that anything that 
cannot be so transformed does not belong in the man. 
Paul lived his life, this great life of his, full and com- 
plete, deficient in nothing, not truncated, not con- 
stricted, but abounding, Paul lived this life in the flesh. 

It was to make the divine life possible in the flesh 
that Christ himself was incarnate, to demonstrate to 
men the possibility that the godlike character might 
be realized in bone and blood and sinew and gristle 
and flesh, and that today it is possible for men to 
live this life, the high, complete, full life in their flesh. 
And of course this means more than the mere flesh 
and blood, meat and bone interpretation of it. It 
means the whole range of our human relationships; 
that inside the family, in all our actual living rela- 
tionships from which we cannot escape, Christ must 
be supreme, and the life of Christ be lived; that Christ 
is to be our life in the flesh of all human experience 

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and all human need and all human activity. And not 
in these narrower ranges only; but across the width 
of all the life of man. 

Professor Lang, of the University of Alabama, tells 
of an experience that he counted one of the most 
singular in his life, which happened when he was a 
graduate student in the University of Edinburgh some 
years ago. He had gone to McEwen Hall to hear Mr. 
Balfour deliver an address on the moral values which 
unite the nations. It was a wonderful address. As 
Professor Lang looked across at the audience to see 
the effect of it on those who listened, he saw opposite 
him in the gallery a Japanese student leaning over the 
gallery and drinking in every word. And when Mr. 
Balfour had ended naming the moral values which 
he conceived bound the nations together, or were at 
last to accomplish the unity of man, there was an 
instant of appreciative silence over all that great hall, 
and in that moment of silence the Japanese student 
stood up and leaning over the balcony said, “But, Mr. 
Balfour, what about Jesus Christ?’ He had spoken 
of the moral values that unite the nations and left 
out the only value that can unite them; the only 
undying, valid bond, the only power by which at last 
the whole life of the world is to be made harmonious 
and complete. 

“The life which I now live,” says Paul—and he is 
embodying in himself the whole collective Christian 
experience; for this that he went through was only 
the thing that all Christian men and women to the 
end of time were to go through—“the life which we 

. live in the flesh we live by the faith of the Son 
of God.” We live it not elsewhere, not far away, not 
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in some other stage of social progress to which some 
day we may come. We may live it in the flesh, the 
only flesh we know, the life that is here, that is today. 


Til 


But men ask themselves, “How can we live this life, 
accepting Paul’s account of where it comes from and 
of where it is to be experienced? We know enough 
from our own lives, of the difficulty of realizing any 
such great achievements as these on the battle ground 
of our experience. Can it be?” Men say that for 
them it cannot be. They know it cannot, for they 
have tried, and again and again have been beaten 
down on this very field. Well, Paul goes on to tell 
us the secret and the power of this absolutely unlimited 
and invincible life: “I am crucified with Christ: 
nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in 
me.” 

One great weakness of our Christian life today in 
our colleges and outside of our colleges is that we have 
thinned it out; we have crowded out the miracle and 
the mystery and the supernatural of it. We have made 
it just a veneer, a moral purpose or an admiration; 
and we have lost those great dynamic energies by 
which alone the thing can ever really be. “I am cruci- 
fied with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but 
Christ liveth in me.’ 

I do not mean to say that the thing can be explained. 
Life cannot be explained. It runs far deeper than our 
understanding of it. But there are some things about 
it that Paul intimates here which make the mystery 
after all not so dark and impenetrable. How was it 
that Christ could do this in him? For one thing, by 
the obvious and experienced principle of our multiple 


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personalities. Paul does not balk at it at all. We think 
that ideas like the subliminal self are modern dis- 
coveries. But Paul knew long ago of these layers of 
a man that make up the man, of the conflict between 
these different levels of his life and the secret that 
one possessed of coming down through the upper levels 
to deep buried potentialities. How many I’s and me’s 
are there here? “I am crucified with Christ”; what 
“T” is that? ‘Nevertheless I live’; is that the same 
“T” that was crucified? “Yet not I’; what “I” is that? 
“But Christ liveth in me”; what “me” is that? “And 
the life which I now live’; is that the old “TI” before 
the crucifixion or the new “I” after rising again, the 
“T’? in his own energies and ambitions, or the “I” 
permeated with the indwelling Christ? ‘The life 
which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of 
the Son of God, who loved me’”—what “me” is that ?— 
“and gave himself for me.” 

Paul knows perfectly well what we know, that every 
man of us is half a dozen men, this man and that man 
and the other. And the wonder of Christ’s insight into 
personality has always been that he does not confuse, 
as we do even in our self-judgment, these multiple 
men, but can make his way among them until he finds 
the last and the least soiled of them all, the man in 
whom there is most of the undeveloped power, the 
man who has lost least of that great birthright of 
kinship with him in whose image we were first of all 
made; and Christ uncovers that and washes it in his 
own blood and breathes confidence into it and strips 
away all the shackles of the sins that so easily beset 
it, and sets that inner best man free. 

And not by the principle of the multiple personality 
only does Christ work, but by the principle of the real 

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and the ever repeated resurrection as well. We remem- 
ber what Donald Hankey said in those last hours which 
he had with his men just before the great hour came, as 
he walked up and down the trenches while they waited 
and spoke to them one by one and in little groups: 
“Boys, we are going over the top tomorrow. Remem- 
ber if you are wounded, it’s blighty; if you are killed, 
it’s the resurrection.” . Through Christ it was a legiti- 
mate inspiration to work with in that black hour. But 
the resurrection is not a principle that comes in the 
last and ultimate moment alone; the resurrection 
is a principle of life every hour of every day. It is 
the power available in men that knows no moral 
limits whatsoever, the power that God put forth when 
he raised Jesus Christ from the dead, the power by 
which in conquering death our Lord showed that there 
was not anything that he could not conquer. 

There is that evil habit that comes when the light 
has gone out and you lie alone. You know its face 
well; and you have always said when you saw it come, 
“Here comes my enemy that is too strong for me.” 
Yes, but not for the power of the resurrection, the 
power that is adequate to deal with any foe, the power 
that is strong enough to nerve a man for any sacrifice, 
the power that is mighty enough to lift any load and 
break the very bars of death. 

There is many a man to whom life is just a half 
thing. The vast deeps have not been cut open for 
him. Sin seems to be a venial affair. The great moral 
realities have never burst on him as they burst that 
day in one blinding vision upon Paul on the highway. 
Well, the power of the resurrection is adequate in the 
life of every one of us today to lift us out of all this half 

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living, out of all these partial visions, out of all these 
toned-down fellowships, out of all these abstentions 
from the sufficient power of God. The power of the 
resurrection is adequate to lift us out of all this and 
to tear these lives of ours open for the coming in of 
the energies that are in Christ. 


IV 

There is one more thing that Paul tells us here: not 
alone about the spring and the power of this great 
life, not alone about the area and the sphere in which 
it can be lived, not alone the secret and the power of 
it, but he is laying bare here also the method and the 
process of it. “And the life which I now live in the 
flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved 
me, and gave himself for me.’ We may take this 
legitimately in two different senses, I suppose. “I live 
it,’ says Paul, “by the faith of the Son of God”; by 
the same kind of faith that he had, by the principle 
of life and relationship with the unseen that controlled 
him; “TI live my new life by that faith.” It would 
mean a new world if we would begin to live our lives 
that way, by Jesus Christ’s faith in God as his Almighty 
Father, in goodness at the heart of everything, at the 
back of the tragedies of life, at the back of the moral 
disciplines both of the individual and of the nation, by 
Jesus Christ’s faith in God as the heart of love at the 
very center of all the life and experience of man, by 
his faith in humanity. 

One can name men and women all over our land 
to whom that faith is an utterly strange thing today. 
They do not believe in humanity as Christ believed 
in it, although they have far more reason for believing 

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in it than he did. “He came unto his own, and his 
own received him not.” He took on human flesh, and 
human flesh crucified him. The very mankind that 
he came to save demonstrated that it was not worth 
his saving, and he still believed in it. If we had 
Christ’s faith in mankind today we would not balk at 
the little things that are proposed for the making of 
a new world—if we had his faith in possibility. “All 
things are possible,” said he in a day of moral penury, 
of national insularity, when the whole world was dead 
in lust and evil. Even in that day all things were 
possible to them that believed. What ought not to be 
possible in a day like this to men who believe that 
there is nothing that ought to be that cannot be, “by 
the faith of the Son of God’! 

Or there is the other meaning. We find it in Mof- 
fatt’s translation of this passage. “The life I now live 
in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who 
loved me and gave himself up for me,” by vital per- 
sonal relationship with Christ, by the loving trust 
that sees in him grace beyond all my deserving, a 
patience that my sin and moral indifference might 
well have outworn but have not. 

I thought His love would weaken 

As more and more He knew me. 

But it burneth like a beacon, 

And its light and heat go through me; 
And I ever hear Him say, 

As He comes along His way,— 
“Wand’ring soul, O do come near Me; 
My sheep should never fear Me; 

I am the Shepherd true, 

I am the Shepherd true.” 


His was a love strong enough to wear down our 
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love of the things that he hates, and to make us will- 
ing to bring our lives in complete surrender to him, 
that his fulfilling and enriching hands may make us 
complete and like himself. 

I know well how imperfectly this draws out what 
Paul was trying to get into words. But I know that 
even this imperfect way of putting it cannot hide the 
truth that is here, and that this is a truth that we are 
needing today, in order that we may experience again 
just what the gospel of Jesus Christ is. Christ is not 
simply a beautiful figure for us to admire across nine- 
teen hundred years. The gospel is not a mere whole- 
some moral teaching, part of which we accept, the rest 
of which we reject because it is now too hard to live 
by. The gospel is a great deal more than that. The 
gospel is the living God confronting men’s lives today 
in the record of what Jesus Christ was and did and in 
the reality of all of this still as a permanent and ever- 
continuing work inside the souls of men, and calling 
us in our lives to leave what is only partial or out on 
the skirts of spiritual reality, and to come in to share 
Christ’s death, and then to go out to live his life. 

I remember coming down on a railroad train many 
years ago from Eaglesmere with a crowd of railroad 
men who had been there for a summer Bible conference. 
We rode in some open freight cars on the old primitive 
railroad which was all there was then, and which has 
not been much improved since. As we sat on the 
boards laid across the open cars, the men were telling 
about their experiences. There was one man, who 
had drunk the cup down to the very lees of it, and 
they had been bitter. And then the Voice had called 
him, and he had risen up to a new career. He was 


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an old, gnarled veteran of the civil war. He was 
telling us about his experience and he said: “It at 
last all came down to this with me. I sat down one 
day in the midst of my sin, with the Savior near mak- 
ing his offer, and I closed with it, and I rose up in his 
strength and power. He died my death for me that 
I might live his life for him.” He died for us to all 
our sin of imagination and of desire and of deed; and he 
rose for us that we might live with him today the new 
life of cleanness and of joy and of power and of vic- 
tory. Yes, and what is equally wonderful, we died 
in his death with him that he might live his life and 
our life in us. This is the gospel of reality. This is 
the reality of the gospel. 


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JoHN TiImMoTHY STONE 


The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, of which 
Dr. Stone is pastor, is one of America’s greatest and most 
resourceful churches. All types of people attend it. It 
includes in its membership a large list of people of great 
wealth and social leadership, and there are also large num- 
bers of people, young men especially, who live in boarding- 
houses and work for small salaries. The church is located 
on Chicago’s gold coast, well downtown, and maintains 
three flourishing public services on Sunday—at 11 A. M., 
4 p. M., and 8 p. m.—and innumerable meetings through 
the week. Its Gothic structure ranks as one of the finest 
pieces of ecclesiastical architecture in America. 

The dynamic of this immense organization is John Tim- 
othy Stone. When he came to Chicago in 1909 from Bal- 
timore, he found the church a pretty dull affair. It was 
running on survival power, not on power presently gener- 
ated. The coming of Dr. Stone acted like the installation 
of a new and powerful dynamo in a factory. The whole 
situation was soon a-throb with the heartbeat of the new 
leader. 

Dr. Stone was born in Boston in 1868, and graduated with 
his A.B. degree at Amherst College in 1891. His divinity 
studies were carried on at Auburn Theological Seminary, 
from which he was graduated in 1894. Immediately he 
began his ministry at Olivet Church, Utica, New York, 
which was followed in 1896 with a pastorate at Cortland, 
New York. In 1900 he was called to the pulpit of Brown 
Memorial Church, Baltimore, the mention of which pulpit 
revives memories of the loved and lamented Maltbie D. 
Babcock, a predecessor. After nine years there he came 
to Fourth Church, Chicago, where his leadership in church 


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and civil life has been outstanding and fruitful. Finding 
a church of 500 members in a worn-out aristocratic old 
building, he convinced them of the importance of putting 
their work on a more commanding level, and raised in 
one year over $850,000 for this purpose. His church now 
has 2600 members and raises a budget of over $200,000 
annually. 

Dr. Stone gives himself without stint to public enterprises 
in his city and to the promotion of the organized work of 
his denomination. He was elected moderator of the General 
Assembly in 1913. As chairman of the committee of fifteen 
to reorganize the missionary and benevolent boards of the 
Presbyterian Church in the United States of America he 
proposed and carried through a plan to reduce the number 
of boards from sixteen to four. He is a trustee of McCor- 
mick Theological Seminary, and of the Presbyterian Hos- 
pital in Chicago. The religious press of the country draws 
freely upon his rich fund of personal experience in dealing 
individually with the spiritual needs of all sorts of people. 
Notably in the Continent he conducts a regular depart- 
ment of such personal guidance. Books carrying his name 
are Recruiting for Christ, The Life of Whitfield, Places of 
Quiet Strength, To Start the Day, etc., etc. Dr. Stone is 
a frequent preacher at the leading universities of the East 
and Middle West. 


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THE VICTORIOUS LIFE 
By JoHN TimotHY STONE 


“But if any man buildeth on the foundation gold, 
silver, costly stones, wood, hay, stubble; each 
man’s work shall be made manifest; for the day 
shall declare it, because rt 1s revealed in fire.”— 
Corinthians 111, 12, 13. 

“He that overcometh shall inherit all things: and 
I will be his God and he shall be my son.”—Revela- 
tion xxi, 7. 


There are two divisions in our thought: the victory 
and the reward. Under the first of these there is the 
contest. The great contests of life, however, are not 
the public strifes. Great battles are of the soul. The 
greatest victories are those contested in the fight for 
character. History is made up of biography, biography 
of the individual life. The enemy without has never 
equaled the enemy within. There is no nation under 
heaven which can injure our own nation as her indi- 
vidual citizens can injure her. 

There is not only great pathos, but great discern- 
ment in the great cry of Shakespeare’s Caesar, “Et tu, 
Brute.” Caesar need not fear the outward enemy. He 
could cross the Alps; he could overcome all the ele- 
ments, and meet all adversaries, but he could not stand 
with treachery. He must trust his own. His fall came 
from within. The honest conviction of Brutus seemed 
treachery to the emperor. 


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Roosevelt could withstand the wild beasts of Africa 
and fill the Smithsonian and other notable collections 
with rare specimens, but he could not withstand the 
subtle, microscopic, imperceptible foe in the animal 
life of South America. . 

The subtle power of sin is not seen in the external 
foe, but the character is injured by the enemy within. 
The strife of life is the strife of the soul. The real 
contest is within the heart. Many a man who can 
withstand the outward enemy is helpless before his 
own soul, as he yields in indulgence to the temptations 
of his own life. Dishonesty seldom starts with pre- 
meditated falsity, but unconsciously within the indi- 
vidual soul of man. Corrupt organizations grow out 
of dishonest souls. The man who deceives society, 
injures and robs humanity, and deludes justice, may 
not be part of a great organization, but he who is really 
dishonest and deceives his own soul is deceiving others. 
The great lie of the ages has been the lie of perjury, 
and perjury is the false swearing of an individual 
soul. The real law of deception is the law of self- 
deception. Sin has that remarkable influence over 
men until in time they fail to see evil as evil and 
grow to interpret evil as good. He fails to see evil as 
evil, hence the adage: “Evil to him that thinketh 
evil.” “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” If 
man is corrupt within he is likely to see good people 
as corrupt. Self-deceived! The contest of the soul 
is inward. 

Many a man can win battles on a field of glory who 
cannot win the battle of his own life. Napoleon moved 
tens of thousands and influenced millions by his mar- 
velous personality, but he died on a far-distant isle, 

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looking out with remorseful spirit over a sea, for he 
realized he had been conquered by his own soul and 
that One greater than he had won, for he was self- 
deceived. The most heroic lives in the whole world 
are not the heroic lives whom the world honors, but 
who in the darkness strive on to win the victory of 
their own souls. Cast on the shore of a boundless 
ocean, wrecked, with all his human possessions gone, 
save the Word of God, Alexander Duff won an age 
and a nation and a continent, for he had a faith which 
realized that he was victorious; he knew he could over- 
come in the present possession of a God who was his 
God and his Father. 


I 


This strife of the soul is the contest which every 
man must face. The idler misunderstands and over- 
looks. The careless is uninterested and thinks of 
nothing but his own present selfish desire. The unin- 
telligent cannot face the issue. He is carried away by 
superficiality, if not by conventionality. But the 
thoughtful soul realizes that the only safe victory of 
any man, woman or child is the victory of the indi- 
vidual soul. “I will do right,” “I will not do wrong,” 
are spoken by the individual soul to himself. 

Now this contest goes on everywhere. Study the 
records of human history in the commercial and eco- 
nomic world, in the world of pedagogy and teaching, 
in the world of public speech, in the realm of law, in 
the field of medicine, wherever we look, everywhere, 
we find that the contest of the individual soul has 
been the means of attaining and has given the victori- 
ous life. What high school child wants to study Latin, 


Fekeny 


The American Pulpit 


or delights in beginning geometry? What college lad 
loves study from the sheer joy of it? But the student 
is made in high school and college days by the stern 
fact of discipline. This last week I addressed one of 
our high schools where some eighteen hundred students 
were gathered—a most stimulating audience. They 
were eager and responsive, but the whole spirit of the 
high school age is the_spirit of attaining that the indi- 
vidual may overcome. Children do not love to study 
any more than we do. They do not like to do finger 
exercises on the piano, but the overcoming, the dis- 
cipline, the constant training of the mind makes the 
youth the worthy man or woman. 

We have seen a careless, independent Jad of high 
school age become one of our great leaders. When he 
graduated the whole university, from professors to 
students, looked up to him with great esteem. Why? 
Those years from high school days on through college 
and university had been years of overcoming and of 
victory, and today he stands head and shoulders above 
his fellows in the great business world because this 
same line of personal victory has dominated his life. 
It has been a contest all along, but he has overcome. 

The victorious life has sacrifice in it, personal sacri- 
fice. Just here a danger occurs in many souls amid 
the great currents of human life because the shallows 
and rocks are unseen. The dangers beneath the surface 
are often inner human feelings, not external! 

Those who can conquer great adverse conditions 
and temptations which are physical or mental often 
go to pieces by inward feelings. They are controlled 
by the impulses of life, by temperamental conditions 
and are tempted to excuse themselves by saying, “Oh 

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well, my father was morose. He did not have a san- 
guine temperament. It was natural for him to be dis- 
couraged. Life is not fair. Life has not the same 
chance or opportunity. We are not born free and 
equal.” Our constitution never said we were. It said, 
“We are created free and equal.” 

But mark you, these same souls say, “I cannot over- 
come my feelings,’ and excuse themselves on this 
basis. Such thoughts are the Scylla on the one side 
and the Charybdis on the other in the great channel 
of human life through which all must pass. Personal 
sensitiveness may be the Scylla, but the Charybdis, the 
rocks of which are so dangerous and cause wreckage, 
are generally our feelings. 

You say, “Yes, but I am not sentimental; I am only 
sensitive.’ Who, that is worthwhile, is not? But 
remember the conquering of human life is an outward 
strife, a strife against a sensitive nature, a control of 
the soul, needing God within the inner life, together 
with the finer instincts and temperaments, which must 
be controlled. 

To illustrate: I talked with a grandfather whose 
home was Godless—no religion, no Savior, no God, no 
church, though his father had been a man of deep 
piety and had trained him with splendid influences at 
home; but he had brought up his own children with- 
out religion. They were Godless, and had chil- 
dren of their own who were Godless—three generations 
without God, and all this because the young man, the 
year after he was married, went to a certain church 
where an officer did not happen to extend a very cordial 
welcome to him, and he turned on his heel and said: 
“T will never enter the house of God again if that is 


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what the church stands for!” Ninety-nine men would 
have welcomed him, no doubt, and the man who failed 
to greet him that morning may have been suffering or 
careless, and still, because he misjudged that officer 
and turned away, he and his home had grown up a 
Godless home; his sons and daughters were Godless; 
his grandchildren were without faith and hope—all 
because he did not conquer a sensitive nature when 
some one was unjust to him. “How great a matter 
a little fire kindleth.” 

I plead with you this morning to realize that the 
contest of the soul is our own contest. The state, 
no matter how loyal her law, nor how just her courts, 
can never make you good. The state cannot save 
you, nor can the church. The gospel of Jesus Christ 
cannot save you unless you exercise your own will- 
power. The contest must be within. It is God with 
man that makes a majority, not God without man. 
The contest, if victorious, must be the conquest of 
our own soul, first with our own hearts and lives. The 
inward strife, the victory over self must be a sure one. 


II 


Again, there is in our text not only the matter of 
victory, but that of reward. ‘He that overcometh 
shall inherit all things.” 'That means present as well 
as future possessions. You say, “No, inheritance means 
something future.” Not in the text. “Shall inherit all 
things.” Not sometime, but now. 

We read in our Scripture lesson of heaven and the 
golden streets of wonderful jewels and marvelous 
foundations. It was a beautiful picture, a wonderful 
imagery, but we are not so much interested, after all, 


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in heaven as in earth, for heaven will take care of 
itself if our faith and life are right. Jesus Christ said, 
“The kingdom of heaven is in your midst.” The 
“shall inherit” is a present possession. The man whose 
religion simply gives him an inheritance ticket into 
heaven has not a religion worth while. We are not 
thinking now of purchasing tickets ahead. We are 
thinking now of a heaven and a religion which are a 
part of the life we live in this city, or wherever we 
live, “by the faith of the Son of God who loved us 
and gave himself for us.” The inheritance is “shall,” 
a present possession. “He that overcometh shall inherit 
all things.” 

The present possession of the soul is the religious 
condition which we would this morning consider. It 
is the value of the present soul in the life which now is. 
The Christian who is going to receive something is not 
worth so much as the Christian who has something, 
who lives now in the spirit of the possession of Christ. 
If we have the love of God and faith in our souls now, 
we will not be much troubled about the future. I have 
no sympathy, although I do not lack respect, for the 
old-type Christianity which used to pray—‘“O God, 
help us to do right here in order that we may have 
heaven there.” It was sincere, but the vision was 
limited. “The kingdom of heaven is within you.” God 
has prepared marvelous things for those who love him. 
“Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it 
entered into the heart of man, the things which God 
hath prepared for them that love him.” This verse is 
not a funeral text only. It has present possession. 
He hath prepared those things for us now. 

The Christian who is victorious is the man who has 


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now that inheritance and lives now in the spirit of 
that inheritance. The man who knows how to enjoy 
the things of this world is better than he who does 
not enjoy them, and has greater possessions. I have 
seen men so cramped with gold, bonds and property, 
that they spent most of their time thinking how 
_ to protect with steel bars that which they have. 
Some men spend most of their time protecting 
their possessions, without giving any thought to their 
use. 

That was a great gift given to our city last week 
for Northwestern university. Why should not more 
such gifts be made to such institutions? Of what 
value is it for men to lay up millions of dollars for 
their children without endowing the city, the nation 
or the world with the great blessings of their wealth? 
Nine out of ten children will be injured by a great 
fortune rather than blessed. The disintegration of 
families of wealth is one of the great tragedies in 
American life. It is scarcely ever true that a family 
ean hold large wealth for three or four generations 
without disintegrating in character. There is not one 
son or daughter in ten inheriting a great fortune who 
has the character and wisdom to make proper use 
of it. There are some exceptions. For instance: A 
father said to his son, “Lad, you have the blood and 
the brain and the industry that I had; now go ahead 
and make your life better than mine has been.” I 
once knew a lad who refused to take the fortune which 
his father offered him. “But,” he said, “I will borrow 
from you on the basis of a consistent policy, and if 
that money is not returned in full to you, I will spend 
the rest of my life paying it back.” 

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You say he had his chance, but he did not take his 
ease because his father left it to him. And today you 
can go to a certain city in this country and see a busi- 
ness ten times as great as his father’s business ever was. 
And why? Because the brain and the heart of that 
youth worked out something better than his father 
gave him in money. The inheritance of life is not 
leaving to others that which they may use, but char- 
acter to make use of life. 

The kingdom of heaven is not a matter of accept- 
ing possessions in the future, but utilizing that which 
we have here. Men and women who have been able 
to acquire great fortunes owe something to the age 
in which they live, to the cities of which they are a 
part. There would never be required a plea for for- 
eign or national missions, for relief, or educational 
institutions if men and women realized that their 
money was God’s money and that they were the 
trustees of God’s money to use it for mankind and 
for the generation in which they live. “The kingdom 
of heaven is in our midst.” What we do now, not only 
with our money, but with our lives will stand the test 
of heaven. ‘He that overcometh shall inherit all 
things.” Any man who is so much interested in pro- 
tecting what he has that he fails to see the vision of 
opportunity in its use, will always be in trouble. Nine- 
tenths of such men break with nervous prostration 
and die prematurely burdened with lives that are 
unfruitful. Riches and wealth are great gifts, but 
must be used aright in the present age in doing God’s 
will. 


The American Pulpit 


III 


In conclusion, let us realize that the contest for the 
life of victory has two other elements: It has worship 
and it has home. In other words, God and Love. You 
see how this verse concludes: “He that overcometh 
shall inherit all things; and I will be his God and he 
shall be my son.” 

Victory, reward, but more, worship and home. “I 
will be his God and he shall be my son.” That word 
“son” means fatherhood, for it implies it. “Son” 
means home, for where there is a father and mother 
and son there is a home. “I will be his God and he 
shall be my son.” 

Is there a sadder human experience today in all the 
world than a man or woman or a home where worship 
is left out? No God, no heaven, no faith, no hope, no 
love! More than six times this last week I have been 
called to deathbeds and officiated at funeral services. 
It is at such times that we realize what worship is. 
Many a secret has been revealed to me this past week, 
and throughout the years, of men who worship in their 
inner hearts. One cannot but regret that such men 
do not make public confession, but the worship is 
there. 

Oh, when the soul is heavy, and the eyes weep alone, 
and in the silent moments of the night, in the troubled 
consciousness of the weakness of sorrow, when it bears 
in upon the heart, what a comfort to have a God, to 
have a place of worship! I have talked with those who 
have said, “TI could bear it if I only had a faith, a grasp 
upon God.” Then we pray with them and say, “Let 
the everlasting arms be underneath and round about,” 
but they do not know that arm; they do not know 


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that God. If they only had a faith; if they only had 
a God, then they would have a hope. 

“He that overcometh shall inherit all things, and I 
will be his God and he shall be my son.” A faith with 
a God! A life with a hope! A death with a resurrec- 
tion! A crucifixion with a tomb from which He arose 
again! <A resurrection with an ascension! A belief 
in a God who helps in human life! 

Careless seems the great avenger; history’s pages 
but record 

One death grapple in the darkness ’twixt old sys- 
tems and the Word; 

Truth forever on the scaffold. Wrong forever on 
the throne— 

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind 
the dim unknown, 

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch 
above his own. 


Such a hope sustains. Clouds and darkness are round 
about us, but God’s in his heaven. No condition of 
soul nor disaster can disturb where God is the victorious 
God. “I will be his God and he shall be my son.” 

Have you a God? Have you a faith? Have you a 
place of worship? 

But he crowns it with home. What a week this is 
for home life—the week before Christmas. Little chil- 
dren ask mother to stay out of a certain room and ask 
father if he can spare a half hour to take them down 
town, and the father knows what that means on the 
crowded streets, but he goes just the same and tries to 
get over the nervous strain, but the child wins him. 
The child is anxious. Everything is eagerness and 
everywhere there are little anticipating faces. Five 
or six little children came to me this morning going 


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to Sunday school, and said as they looked at the 
Christmas tree out in the court of the church building 
—‘You have a Christmas tree early this year, haven’t 
you? We are glad the church is having a tree. We 
are going to have one at home,” and they talked as" 
fast as they could, and all at once. They were all 
happy and eager. One little child said, “I have a 
stocking twice as big as my leg.” I asked her why 
she got that, and she replied, “Because I know what 
is coming!” 


IV 


It is Christmas season; it is home. J heard a friend 
who was mailing packages early remark that the man 
who was insuring her packages said, “It must be great 
joy to send these packages.” He was a middle-aged 
man, pleasant looking. He said, “Do you know I have 
not a friend on earth or relative to whom to send 
anything, and so far as I know no relative is going 
to send me anything.” It was sad! 

Home! Home! What it means, everywhere. Home! 
“T will be your God and you shall be my son.” Think 
of having God for a Father and he is the Father of 
every one! The heavenly home-maker. 

At a funeral service this last week a man spoke to 
me whom I did not know. He was rough, and looked 
as if he had made a great effort to clothe himself 
aright to come to the service. His great rough face 
had tears on it, and as he wiped those tears away he 
said, “He was a father to me. I was in jail and he 
came to me, and still he locked me in.” Well, it 
touched my heart. I thought of the verse—“I was 
in prison and ye came unto me.” The man had done 


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everything he could to make himself presentable to 
come to the funeral because he loved the man who 
had been a father to him, one who had been a father 
in discipline as well as a father in love. “I will be to 
him a father and he will be to me a son.” 

O men and women, such is God. He is our Father. 
Some of us well remember our fathers. My father 
died when I was but a lad, but I will never forget 
when I stood by his coffin and realized that my father 
was gone; but in his life of integrity and love I knew 
what fatherhood was. I could not weep though I 
wanted to, but he was a father and I was his son and 
he was everything to me. | 

Sometimes I think when we emphasize Mothers’ 
Day with all the blessings of it, we should not forget 
Fathers’ Day. ‘I will be to you a father and you 
shall be to me a son.” Our God and our Father is 
ever living. The home is the home here and the home 
eternally. “God,” the Father, “so loved the world 
that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever 
believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal 
life.” 

The fatherhood of God implies the home of the soul, 
and all through belief in Jesus Christ, my Savior, his 
son, who died on the cross. 

Shall we not fight and overcome? Are we not going 
to be the inheritors of the things of God in present 
possession? Are we not going to have a God whom 
we can worship? A God whom we can love? Such 
is the victorious life and the message of our text. 


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WILLIAM ASHLEY SUNDAY 


The most picturesque figure in the pulpit of his time is 
Dr. Sunday, familiarly and universally called “Billy” Sun- 
day. To speak of him as belonging to the “pulpit” at all, 
suggests to those familiar with his career an incongruity 
which aptly illustrates his unique place in the contemporary 
ministry. The “pulpit” carries with it certain implications 
of convention, dignity and established order. But “Billy” 
Sunday’s fame and power are associated with, if they are 
not derived from, his complete disregard of all the stand- 
ards and attitudes and traditional procedures characteristic 
of the “pulpit.” His ministry has not been carried on from 
a pulpit in a church, but from a pulpit in temporary 
tabernacles—great buildings, low-roofed, conformed to a 
design of proved acoustical properties, seated with pine 
benches, and floored with sawdust. Since 1896 Mr. Sunday 
has been in the public eye as an evangelist. As an object 
of intense popular interest he reached the zenith of his 
career in the second decade of this century when his missions 
were the unparalleled events of the great cities of the 
United States, including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, 
and many others. The human story of Mr. Sunday’s rise 
from the farm in Iowa on which he was born in 1863 to 
the thrilling heights of evangelistic success is most dramatic 
and appealing. His father’s face he never saw. Left by 
his helpless mother to the care of an institution for children 
of civil war veterans, he later drifted to the cities, where he 
finally became a professional baseball player in the National 
League, playing with Philadelphia, Pittsburg and Chicago. 
His conversion occurred as the outcome of a drunken 
debauch, in which he was drawn by a missioner into the 
Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago. Abandoning not only 


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his bad habits but, soon afterward, his profession of ball- 
playing, he attached himself to the Y. M.C. A. as an assist- 
ant secretary. Soon his powers as an exhorter and personal 
worker led him into evangelistic work, first in an assistant’s 
relation to Rev. J. Wilbur Chapman and then independ- 
ently. Churches, at first mainly in Middle West communi- 
ties, would unite their forces and call “Billy” Sunday to 
hold a revival. Wherever he went his revival became a 
community event. Freed from the conventional seclusion 
of the church building and brought out into a huge tent 
or, as later, a wood tabernacle, religion was made “the talk 
of the town.” Mr. Sunday’s language shattered all eccle- 
siastical standards of propriety, his frontal attacks on the 
sins both of church members and non-church members siz- 
zled with a vocabulary of slang and startling epithet. He 
wasted no words in merely hinting at sins, but boldly bared 
them to public view. The gross sins were the chief object 
of his attack. He revived a consciousness of the Ten Com- 
mandments. He fought the drink evil and the saloon with 
almost preternatural passion, and it is universally con- 
ceded that Mr. Sunday’s influence has been a substantial 
factor in bringing about the prohibition regime. Opinion 
in the Christian community is divided as to the real and 
enduring value of the type of revivalism of which Dr. Sun- 
day’s work has been our most conspicuous contemporary 
expression. The more superficial criticisms of his work 
bear upon the unusually large financial rewards accruing 
to the evangelist at the close of each eight weeks’ campaign. 
Quite aside from the criticisms of Mr. Sunday’s methods it 
remains a fact that he has climbed to an eminence of 
public attention attained by few men in his time, and it 
must be added that his clean and wholesome character 
have won the admiration of thousands even as the charm 
of his radiant personality has won their affection. 


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FOOD FOR A HUNGRY WORLD 
By Witu1amM A. SUNDAY 


“They need not depart; give ye them to eat.” 
—Matthew xiv, 16. 


Some folks do not believe in miracles. I do. A 
denial of miracles is a denial of the virgin birth of 
Jesus. The Christian religion stands or falls on the 
virgin birth of Christ. God created Adam and Eve 
without human agencies. He could and did create 
Jesus supernaturally. I place no limit on what God 
ean do. If you begin to limit God, then there is no 
God. 

I read of a preacher who said that the miracles of the 
Bible were more of a hindrance than a help. Then 
he proceeded to spout his insane blasphemy. He 
imagined Jesus talking to the five thousand and like 
many speakers overrunning his time limit. The dis- 
ciples, seeing night coming, said: “Master, you have 
talked this crowd out of their supper and there is 
nothing to eat in this desert place; dismiss them so 
they can go into the towns and country and get food.” 

He imagined Jesus saying: “We have some lunch, 
haven’t we?” 

“Yes, but not enough to feed this crowd.” 

“Well, let’s divide it up and see.” So, Jesus pro- 
ceeds to divide his lunch with the hungry crowd. 

An old Jew, seeing Jesus busy, asked, “What’s he 


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doing?” “Dividing his lunch.” “Huh,” grunts this 
old knocker, “He is the first preacher [ve ever seen 
who practices what he preaches.’ Shamed by the 
example of Jesus, this old tight-wad brought out his 
lunch basket and began to divide. Others caught the 
spirit and followed suit and in this way the five 
thousand were fed. This heretic of a so-called preacher 
thought such an occurrence more reasonable than the 
Bible account. Every attempt to explain the miracles 
by natural laws gets the explainer into great difficulty 
and shows him up as ridiculous. 

I wish to draw some practical lessons from this 
miracle of Jesus feeding the five thousand. The world 
is hungry. Jesus stood face to face with the problem 
of physical hunger just as we in our day face the prob- 
lem of hunger, not only physical but spiritual. If one 
were to believe all the magnificent articles in current 
and religious literature, one would think the world 
is disgusted and indifferent to the religion of Jesus 
Christ. I believe exactly the opposite is true. In no 
century since the morning stars sang together has there 
been more real hunger for genuine religion than this. 
And yet, many a preacher, instead of trying to feed 
this spiritual hunger, is giving some book review, stak- 
ing a claim out on Jupiter or talking evolution, trying 
to prove we came from a monkey with his prehensile 
tail wrapped around a limb shying cocoanuts at his 
neighbor across the alley. The world is not disgusted 
with religion, but is disgusted with the worldliness, 
rituals, ceremonies and non-essentials in which we have 
lost religion. 

There are some kinds of religion the world is not 
hungry for: 

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Food for a Hungry World 


A religion of formal observances. In Isaiah, first 
chapter, the Lord says: “To what purpose is the 
multitude of your sacrifices? I am full of the burnt 
offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts. Incense 
is an abomination unto me; your new moons and your 
appointed feasts my soul hateth. When you make 
prayers, I will not hear them. Your hands are full 
of blood. Put away the evil of your doings; cease to 
do evil, learn to do well.” 

Their formalism didn’t make a hit with the Lord. 
He saw through their smoke screen. Religion does 
not consist in doing a lot of special things, even if 
branded as religious, but in doing everything in a 
special way as the Lord directs. Whenever the church 
makes its observances and forms the end instead of 
the means to the end, the world will turn its back 
on it. 

Praying is not an act of devotion—reading the Bible 
is not an act of devotion—going to church is not an 
act of devotion—partaking of the communion is not 
an act of devotion; these are aids to devotion. The 
actual religion lies not in prayer, reading the Bible, 
church attendance but in the quality of life which 
these observances create in you. If the doing of 
these things does not change your life, then it profits 
you nothing to have them done. Thousands forget 
religion and allow the forms of religion to take the 
place of religion. They are substituting religiousness 
for righteousness. Jesus alone can save the world, 
but Jesus can’t save the world alone. He needs our 
help. | 

The world is not hungry for a religion of theory. 
There was a time when people were interested in- 
tensely in fine-spun theological theories. You could 

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announce a debate on the forms of baptism and pack 
the house with the 8. R. O. sign hanging out. That 
day has passed; a debate on baptism or predestination 
would not draw a corporal’s guard. The average man 
has not lost interest in the vital truths connected with 
these topics, but he has lost interest in the type of 
religion that spends its energy in argument, word bat- 
tles, and wind jammmg. Religion should relate to 
life and conduct as well as theory. 

There has never been a time in my memory when 
religion has been so reduced to forms and ritual as 
today. In the mind of Jesus religion was not to build 
up the church, but the church was to build up religion. 
Religion was not the end but the means to the end. 
Jesus was so far removed from the formalism and 
traditions taught by the priests instead of teaching 
the commands of God that he was constantly at cross- 
purposes with them. A church of make-believers will 
soon beget a generation of non-believers. 

The church in endeavoring to serve God and Mam- 
mon is growing cross-eyed, losing her power to know 
good from evil. Jesus dealt with fundamentals; his 
quietest talk had a torpedo effect on his hearers. Some 
sermons instead of being a bugle call to service are 
showers of spiritual cocaine. I am satisfied that there 
has never been a time when it is harder to live a 
consistent Christian life than now. I believe the con- 
flict between God and the Devil, right and wrong, 
was never hotter. The allurements of sin have never 
been more fascinating. I do not believe there ever 
was a time since Adam and Eve were turned out of 
Eden when traps and pitfalls were more numerous 
and dangerous than today. 

The world is not hungry for a religion of social 

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Food for a Hungry World 


service without Christ. I will go with you in any 
and all movements for the good of humanity providing 
you give Jesus Christ his rightful place. You cannot 
bathe anybody into the kingdom of God. You cannot 
change their hearts by changing their sanitation. It 
is an entirely good and Christian act to give a down- 
and-outer a bath, bed and a job. It is a Christian act 
to maintain schools and universities, but the road into 
the kingdom of God is not by the bath tub, the uni- 
versity, social service, or gymnasium, but by the blood- 
red road of the cross of Jesus Christ. 

The Bible declares that human nature is radically 
bad and the power to uplift and change is external; 
that power is not In any man, woman or system, but 
by repentance and faith in the sacrificial death of Jesus 
Christ. The church is the one institution divinely 
authorized to feed the spiritual hunger of this old 
sin-cursed world. 

You will notice that Jesus did not feed the multitude. 
He created the food and asked his disciples to dis- 
tribute it. Jesus was the chef, not the waiter at this 
banquet. Jesus created salvation, the only food that 
will feed the spiritual hunger of the world; the task 
of distributing the food is in the hands of his human 
followers. 

For every two nominal Christians, there are three 
who are not even nominal. Out of every two church 
members, one is a spiritual lability; four out of five 
with their names on our church records are doing 
nothing to bring the world to Jesus. There are twenty 
million young men in this country between the ages 
of sixteen and thirty. Nineteen million are not mem- 
bers of any church; nine million attend church occa- 
sionally; ten million never darken a church door. 

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Seventy-four per cent of our criminals are young men 
under twenty-one years of age. In the past twenty- 
five years the age of prostitutes has fallen from twenty- 
six years of age to seventeen years of age. Five hun- 
dred girls fifteen years old and under were divorced 
or widowed last year. Juvenile crime increased in one 
year from thirty-two poy cent to a hundred and thirty- 
eight per cent. 

There are many set tiOns that enter into compe- 
tition with the church in preaching certain phases of 
religion, but not in preaching religion itself. Associ- 
ate charities preach charity sometimes with stronger 
emphasis than the church. Some organizations talk 
about justice and square dealing with more vehemence 
than the church. Some individuals thunder against 
vice and crime more than the pulpit. Many institu- 
tions and organizations preach one or more phases of 
religion, but it is to the church humanity must ever 
turn for the last word on salvation and eternal destiny. 

People are dissatisfied with philosophy, science, new 
thought—all these amount to nothing when you have 
a dead child in the house. These do not solace the 
troubles and woes of the world. They will tell you 
that when they were sick and the door of the future 
was opening in their face, the only comfort they could 
find was in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Christianity is 
the only sympathetic religion that ever came into the 
world, for it is the only religion that ever came from 
God. 

Take your scientific consolation into a room where 
a mother has lost her child. Try your doctrine of the 
survival of the fittest with that broken-hearted woman. 
Tell her that the child that died was not as fit to live 
as the one left alive. Where does that scientific junk 

[ 336 ] 


Food for a Hungry World 


lft the burden from her heart? Go to some dying 
man and tell him to pluck up courage for the future. 
Try your philosophy on him; tell him to be confident 
in the great to be and the everlasting what is it. Go 
to that widow and tell her it was a geological necessity 
for her husband to croak. Tell her that in fifty mil- 
lion years we will all be scientific mummies on a shelf 
—petrified specimens of an extinct race. What does 
all this stuff get her? After you have gotten through 
with your science, philosophy, psychology, eugenics, 
social service, sociology, evolution, protoplasms, and 
fortuitous concurrence of atoms, if she isn’t bug-house. 
I will take the Bible and read God’s promise, and 
pray—and her tears will be dried and her soul flooded 
with calmness like a California sunset. 

Is the church drawing the hungry world to its tables? 
There is no dodging or blinking or pussy-footing the 
fact that in drawing the hungry world to her tables, 
the church is facing a crisis. That there is a chasm 
between the church and the masses no one denies. If 
the gain of the church on the population is represented 
by eighty during the past thirty years, during the last 
twenty years it is represented by four, and during the 
past ten years it is represented by zero. The birth 
rate is going on a limited express while the new birth 
rate is going by way of freight. 

Need the world turn to other tables than those of 
the church for spiritual food? Jesus said, “They need 
not depart; give ye them to eat.” The church has the 
power and the food with which to feed the hungry 
world. It can feed the spiritual hunger of the world 
by doing what Jesus did when he fed the five thousand. 
By a wise use of what it has on hand with the bless- 
ing of God upon it, what has the church on hand 

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with which to feed the hungry world! It has two 
things: 

A set of principles which if put into practice in the 
life of the individual and society and business and 
politics will solve every difficulty and problem of city, 
state, nation, and the world. There is no safer or 
saner method to settle all the world’s problems than 
by the sermon on the mount. These principles are 
truth, justice, and purity. It has a person who has 
the power to create and make powerful these prin- 
ciples in the lives of men and women and that person 
is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 

Many skeptics have said, “Bill, if you will only 
preach the principles of Christianity instead of the 
Person, we will find no fault with you.’ Nothing 
doing, old top! Wherever a preacher or a church 
preaches a set of principles without the person Jesus 
Christ, that ministry, that church, becomes sterile 
and powerless. Truth is never powerful unless 
wrapped up ina person. I take truth and wrap it up in 
Christ and say, “Take it!” You say, “Give me truth 
but no Christ.” Then you will be lost. You are not 
saved by truth but by the person Jesus Christ. Why 
take truth and reject Christ when it’s Christ that in- 
spires truth? 

I take justice and wrap Christ up with it and say, 
“Here, take it.” You say, “I will take justice. I deal 
squarely in business, pay my debts, give labor a square 
deal; I take justice but not your Christ.” You are 
lost. Why take justice and cast Christ away when 
it is Christ that inspires justice. 

I take purity and wrap it up with Jesus and say, 
“Here, take this.” You say, “I will take the principle 
purity but not the person Jesus Christ.” Then you 

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Food for a Hungry World 


are lost, for it is Christ that saves, not the principle 
of purity. “One thing thou lackest,”’ the person Jesus. 

Other religions have preached good things, but they 
have no Savior who can take these things and implant 
them in the human heart and make them grow. All 
other religions are built around principles, but the 
Christian religion is built around a person Jesus Christ, 
the Son of God, our Savior. Every other religion on 
earth is a religion you must keep, but the Christian 
religion saves you, keeps you, and presents you fault- 
less before his throne. Oh, Christians! Have you 
any scars to show that you have fought in this con- 
flict with the devii? When a war is over, heroes have 
scars to show; one rolls back his sleeve and shows a 
gunshot wound; another pulls down his collar and 
shows a wound on the neck; another says, “I never 
had use of that leg since Gettysburg’; another says, 
“T was wounded and gassed at the Marne in France.” 
Christ has sears to show—scars on his brow, on his 
hands, on his feet, and when he pulls aside his robes of 
royalty, there will be seen the scar on his side. 

When the Scottish chieftains wanted to raise an 
army, they would make a wooden cross, set it on fire 
and carry it through the mountains and the highlands 
among the people and wave the cross of flame and the 
people would gather beneath the standard and fight for 
Scotland. I come out with the cross of the son of 
God—it is a flaming cross, flaming with suffering, 
flaming with triumph, flaming with victory, flaming 
with glory, flaming with salvation for a lost world! 


[ 339 ] 


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ERNEST FREMONT TITTLE 


Among the twenty-five preachers of outstanding influence 
in America it is a distinction indeed to be the youngest. 
This distinction belongs to Dr. Tittle, who was born in 
Ohio in 1885. His inclusion in such a list, made up by vote 
of his brother ministers of all denominations, is no mystery, 
for Dr. Tittle stands at the summit of pastoral and pulpit 
attainment and is in the full tide of a career of widespread 
and profound influence. The great First Methodist Church 
of Evanston, Illinois, of which he is minister, is commonly 
called the cathedral of American Methodism. It is hard 
by the campus of Northwestern University. By virtue of 
its long tradition as the leading Methodist Church in this 
wealthy and cultured suburb of Chicago, it is a “charge” 
whose pulpit seeks the most gifted preacher of the entire 
denomination, as indeed its exacting conditions need the 
most capable. Into this pulpit Dr. Tittle came in 1918. He 
has made it a throne of Christian power. Preaching Sun- 
day after Sunday to a great throng of students and pro- 
fessors and townspeople, he brings a message which does 
what the Gospel was intended to do everywhere—it com- 
forts, and enlightens, and disquiets, and inspires the souls 
of men, leading them to the salvation that is in Christ Jesus 
alone. In all community and university affairs his hand 
is an active and constructive force. Knowing life in terms 
of a training so altogether modern, his very youth has estab- 
lished vital contacts with people burdened and perplexed 
with all sorts of problems. To all these problems of his 
people, whether he meets them in the pastoral relation or 
in pulpit utterance, he brings a mind rich with knowledge 
and sensitive with sympathy and sound feeling. He 
preaches with a courage that is almost naive, declaring the 


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truth as he sees it, without those qualifications and com- 
promises that derive from an over-sophisticated profession- 
alism. It is this quality of utter sincerity, and of earnest- 
ness devoid of shrewdness, that holds a church of many 
types of mind and often of unconsenting social and theo- 
logical opinions in an intense and generous loyalty to its 
minister. Upon his soul the great war left its deep mark. 
Overseas while the fight was on, he participated in the St. 
Mihiel offensive, and had rare opportunity to see war as it 
is. To him it is no thing of glory, but of inferno. He allies 
himself wholeheartedly with every effort to bring the con- | 
science of the church and of the state to the point of abol- 
ishing the war system, and defends from his pulpit the moral 
right and the nobility of those who for Christ’s sake refuse 
to have part in the world’s “chief collective sin.” 

Dr. Tittle came to Evanston from the Broad Street 
Methodist Church, Columbus, Ohio. Previously he had 
held Methodist pastorates at Christiansburg, Ohio; River- 
dale Church, Dayton, Ohio, and University Church, Dela- 
ware, Ohio. Ohio Wesleyan was his alma mater, where he 
was graduated in 1906, afterward taking his divinity course 
at Drew Theological Seminary, where he received the B.D. 
degree in 1908. Ohio Wesleyan conferred upon him the 
degree of D.D. Dr. Tittle has recently published a book, 
What Must the Church Do to Be Saved? and he contributes 
a Saturday sermon each week to the Chicago Evening Post. 


[ 342 ] 


EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 
By Ernest Fremont TITTLE 


“My Father worketh even until now, and I 
work.”’—John v, 17. 

“The earth beareth fruit of herself; first the 
blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.” 
—Mark iv, 28. 


Please let me say at the outset that my purpose is 
not controversial. I am not out to attack anybody. 
IT am not even out to convert anybody. If there is any 
person present who has made up his mind that he can- 
not believe in evolution, or that he ought not to believe 
in it, or that in any case he will not believe in it, I 
have not the slightest desire to convince him that he 
is wrong. It is not written, Except a man become per- 
suaded of the truth of evolution, he shall in no wise 
enter into the kingdom of heaven. Many of the great- 
est saints of the centuries have lived and died without 
even so much as a glimpse of those thrilling vistas 
which open before the eyes of the evolutionist. And 
I have no doubt that during many years to come, 
persons who could be described as the salt of the earth 
will live and die with no more understanding of what 
is meant by evolution than was possessed by St. Francis 
of Assisi or St. Paul. I am bound to confess that 
whenever I meet a saint—someone who seems to in- 
carnate the spirit of Christ—I do not wait to ascertain 
whether he believes in evolution or in any other sci- 


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entific theory; I at once thank God and take courage. 
I have, therefore, no desire to persuade anybody to 
believe in evolution who does not want to be per- 
suaded, or in whose mind the question of evolution 
has never been raised. 

But I am conscious of the fact that there are many 
persons in whose minds the question of evolution has 
been seriously raised. ~ No boy or girl today can go to 
a first-class high school, not to mention a first-class 
college, without being introduced to at least some 
of the data on which belief in evolution is based. I 
am very sure, therefore, that there is no high school 
student who does not feel at least some interest in 
the question which we are proposing to discuss. And I 
am almost equally sure that there is no parent of a high 
school student who is not concerned with the question, 
What is the bearing of the conception of evolution 
upon religious faith? 

Slowly, but surely the conviction is gaining ground 
that the fact of evolution will have to be accepted. 
There are no less than six theories of evolution, of the 
way in which the thousands upon thousands of dif- 
ferent plant and animal species have been evolved. 
And it may be that no single one of these theories 
can finally be accepted. It may be that although each 
of them contains some valuable suggestion, none of 
them tells the whole story. But even though every 
theory of evolution that has yet been advanced may 
prove to be inadequate, the fact of evolution is likely 
to remain undisturbed. 

In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the delicious and irrepressible 
Topsy blandly announces that she never had any 
parents, she just grew. But we are now in a position 

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Evolution and Religion 


to affirm that there is nothing in all the world that 
never had any parents. Everything that is came from 
something that was. 

There was not, for instance, a certain Monday when 
there was, in all the universe, no single sun or moon 
or shining star, and then a following Tuesday when 
lo, a sun shone, and a moon gave forth its light, and 
the heavens were studded with stars. There was not 
a certain Tuesday when there was, on all the earth, 
no single tree or flower or blade of grass, and then a 
following Wednesday when gigantic redwoods lifted 
their branches three hundred feet into the air, and 
alpine lilies appeared on every mountainside, and 
grass grew in every valley. There was not a certain 
Wednesday when there was, in all the seas, no living 
creature, and then a following Thursday when the 
waters swarmed with fishes. There was not a certain 
Thursday when there was, on any continent, no single 
lion or tiger or woolly rhinoceros, and then a following 
Friday when animals of every description roamed the 
forests and appeared upon the plains. There was not 
a certain Friday when there was, in all the world, no 
single human being, and then a following Saturday 
when a full-grown man appeared. Everything that is 
came from something that was. Everything that was 
came from something that was before that, and before 
that, and before that. No man or mountain, no lion 
or lichen, no fish or flower was ever created outright. 
Everything has evolved, higher forms of life from 
lower forms of life, and these lower forms from other 
forms lower still. That is the belief of increasing 
numbers of men who have devoted a lifetime to study 
of the evidence. And so, the conviction grows that 

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however little we may yet know about the method 
of evolution, the origin of species, the fact of evolu- 
tion will have to be reckoned with by intelligent 
persons. 

What is the bearing of this fact upon religious 
faith? I shall venture to suggest not only that a man 
may believe in evolution and still believe in God, but 
that a convinced evolutionist may find in the concep- 


tion of evolution a positive support for his religious 
faith. 


I 


It would, of course, be utterly absurd to claim that 
Jesus was an evolutionist. Our Lord was no more an 
evolutionist than he was a republican. He was neither 
a scientist nor a politician. He was not even a theo- 
logian. He was a great mystic, the greatest of all 
mystics, who saw farther into the heart of reality than 
any other son of man has ever seen, and in whom, 
Christians believe, the heart of reality was completely 
revealed. 

But although Jesus was not an evolutionist, there are 
two sayings of his which, in the light of the evolution- 
ary hypothesis, become almost startlingly meaningful. 
In the fourth gospel, he is reported to have said, “My 
Father worketh even until now, and I work.” And in 
the gospel of Mark he is reported to have said, ““The 
earth beareth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the 
ear, then the full grain in the ear.’ A man who 
believes in evolution may say, My Father worketh 
even until now. Not in spite of the fact, but by reason 
of the fact that he has come to believe in evolution, 
he may think of his heavenly Father as having been 
continually at work in the world, causing the inorganic 


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Evolution and Religion 


to become organic; causing the organic to advance from 
amoeba to man; causing man himself to advance from 
those brutish ancestors of ours who first stood erect and 
developed hands, to those saints immortal in whom 
the ape and the tiger died. And the man who believes 
in evolution, as he tries to visualize the process by 
which his heavenly Father has been working in the 
world, may repeat with extraordinary appreciation 
those other words: “First the blade, then the ear, then 
the full grain in the ear.” No man or bit of moss, 
no crescent moon or bit of crystal, no plant or bit of 
protoplasm was ever created outright; but, “First the 
blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.” Itis 
not the saying of an evolutionist. But it is a saying 
which the convinced evolutionist may make use of as 
he attempts to visualize the way in which his heavenly 
Father has been working through the ages. 


II 

Nothing could be farther from the truth than the 
suggestion that “evolution is an invention whereby 
it is hoped to get rid of God.” For, in the first place, 
it is not the object of science either to prove or to 
disprove the existence of God. The object of science 
is far humbler than that. It is merely to study phe- 
nomena; to observe the relation of one fact to another, 
and to describe as accurately and fully as possible the 
laws which govern this relationship. But when it 
comes to the greatest of all questions — what lies 
back of phenomena?—science, as such, has nothing to 
say. In this greatest of all questions, the scientist as 
a man may be profoundly interested. But merely as 
a scientist, he feels obliged to confess that it lies be- 
yond the reach of any instrument which he knows how 

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to employ. He pushes his investigations of phenomena 
farther and farther back. He divides the atom into its 
constituents. He speaks of electrons and protons. At 
this present moment, his mind is fascinated by the 
thought that electrons and protons may be but the 
varying manifestations of a single ultimate medium 
through which an invisible, all-pervading energy works. 
But when he has pushed his investigation to the very 
end of the scientific trail, he is just as certainly in the 
presence of the last Great Mystery as is any savage 
who has never looked through a microscope, or any 
child who has never experimented with a test tube. 
Moreover, the suggestion that “evolution is an in- 
vention whereby it is hoped to get rid of God” is in 
direct conflict with the undeniable fact that the great 
majority of evolutionists have believed, and do now 
believe in God. In one of the last letters he wrote, 
Darwin himself declared, “I have never been an 
atheist in the sense of denying the existence of God.” 
Rendel Harris tells us that from his dear friend, 
Frances Power Cobbe, he learned a great lesson, 
namely, that “we must not cease to believe that God 
did anything because we have found out the way 
in which he did it.” If only all of us could learn that 
lesson, how very much mental pain would-be spared us! 
Have you ever seen a magician draw a rabbit out of a 
hat? When he first showed you the hat, there was 
nothing in it but the hatband. And yet, the very next 
moment, out of that undeniably empty hat there came 
an undeniable rabbit. Marvelous! Miraculous! But 
suppose some day you should be alert enough—I never 
have been—to discover how he drew that cunning 
rabbit out of that ordinary hat. You might cease 
then to regard the operation as marvelous, miraculous. 


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Evolution and Religion 


But would you cease to believe that he had actually 
performed it? Please do not press my parable too 
hard. The suggestion is not that the Almighty God 
is a glorified magician who delights to play tricks on 
us, but only that, when science unravels one after 
another the mysteries of life, and we begin to under- 
stand how God does certain things, it does not follow 
that we must cease to believe that he actually does 
them. 

The time, I am afraid, is not yet past when religious 
people try to pin their faith in God on their ignorance 
rather than on their knowledge. What is the origin 
of life? We do not know; so at that point there is 
really some need to believe in God. What is the origin 
of self-consciousness in man? We do not fully know; 
so at that point, too, there is really some need to 
believe in God. But it now seems almost certain 
that science will be able, some day, to trace the develop- 
ment of self-consciousness, aye, the development of life 
itself from inorganic elements. And persons who think 
of God only in connection with that which is not yet 
fully understood cannot but view with dread the ap- 
proach of that day. 

How different the case of men and women who 
have really learned with Rendel Harris the great lesson 
that we must not cease to believe that God did any- 
thing because we have found out the way in which he 
did it. As yet the marvelous story of evolution has 
been only partially told. Only a relatively small por- 
tion of it has been published to the world. But almost 
every year now at least a few new chapters are added. 
And if it shall ever come to pass that men may read 
how life merged from inorganic matter, and how, step 
after step, it developed from a jellylike amoeba to the 

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greatest saints of the centuries, then, with an even 
greater wonder, an even deeper reverence, some future 
generation may stand uncovered in the presence of the 
creat “I am” and say, “How wonderful, O Lord, are 
all thy works.” 


Itt 


Nor is there any ground for the fear that evolution 
would blot out the image of God in the soul of man. 

At this point we need to guard ourselves against 
the silly mistake of judging the fruit of the tree by 
the root of the tree. Some one advances the theory 
that the idea of immortality was born of dreams in 
which the dreamer wandered far afield from the place 
where his body lay, and so conceived the idea that 
there is a kind of happy hunting ground to which the 
spirit goes after death. Now I, for my part, do not 
know whether the idea of immortality originated in 
this fashion. But suppose it did. Ought I to conclude 
that because it did, I today can no longer entertain it— 
overlooking the fact that modern belief in immortality 
rests on far different grounds? However the thought 
of life after death came into the world, 1t has man- 
aged to remain in the world. It has managed to justify 
itself to some of the greatest minds of the race. It 
has proved an ever fruitful source of inspiration for 
noble living. And it is written, “By their fruits (not 
by their roots) ye shall know them.” Not by the way 
an idea comes into the world, but by the way in 
which it works in the world, must its validity and 
nobility be judged. 

So, also, in the case of man himself. Some one ad- 
vances the theory that man has emerged from lower 
forms of life. Darwin declared that he bears about in 

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Evolution and Religion 


his body the stigmata of his lowly origin. Walt Whit- 
man declared that he is “‘stuccoed all over with quad- 
rupeds.” Some one else has called attention to the 
presence, in modern man, of more than fifty bodily 
relics which are of no conceivable use to him in his 
present state, but which were of use to him at various 
stages of his upward climb—the vermiform appendix, 
for instance, and the muscles with which some of us 
are able to move our ears! But when you have 
acknowledged that man had a lowly origin, must you 
come to the conclusion that he is altogether of the 
earth, earthy? How can you come to that conclusion 
in the presence of the prophets and poets and saints 
and seers of the centuries? When a man like Phillips 
Brooks appears, whatever may lie back of him in a 
past unimaginably remote, you know that he bears, 
in his spirit, the image of God. 

From the point of view of the evolutionist, in reply 
to the question, 


“What is man that thou art mindful of him, 
and the son of man that thou visitest him?” 


we may still answer: 


“Thou hast made him but little lower than God 
and crownest him with glory and honor.” 


Ask any evolutionist, What of man’s origin?, and he 
will reply that man’s origin was lowly enough. Ask 
the great majority of evolutionists, What of man’s 
destiny?, and they will reply, ‘““Now is he the son of 
God, and it does not yet appear what he shall be, but 
there is at least a reasonable hope that some day he 
will become one with the eternal Father of his spirit.” 


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IV 

But someone may say, If evolution be true, what 
becomes of the Bible? Well, there is a very pleasing 
tradition that when Galileo was charged with teachings 
concerning the heavenly bodies that were contrary to 
the teachings of the Bible, one of his defenders 
remarked, “The Bible was given to tell us how to go 
to heaven, not how-the heavens go.” Is not that 
another great lesson which some of us need to learn? 
The Bible was given to tell us how to go to heaven, 
not how the heavens go. It was written by men who 
were concerned to say that God is, and that he is able 
to do for tempted, troubled human spirits far more 
abundantly than they ask or think. It was not written 
by men who were trying to produce a scientific thesis 
that would procure for them a coveted Ph. D. degree. 

“In the beginning,” writes the author of the opening 
chapter of Genesis, ““God created the heavens and the 
earth.” Then he goes on to tell the marvelous story of 
creation in accordance with the fullest knowledge and 
the deepest insight which he possessed. He had never 
looked through a microscope. He had never looked 
through a telescope. He had never experimented with a 
test tube. He lived in a pre-scientific age. Suppose he 
were living now. Suppose he were able to avail himself 
of all the scientific apparatus which the centuries have 
produced, and of all the scientific information which 
the centuries have accumulated. Would he not tell the 
story differently? I, for one, believe that he would. 
But even though he told the story somewhat differ- 
ently, would he not still say, “In the beginning, God?” 
And was not that, after all, the one thing which he was 
supremely concerned to say? 

In the second chapter, another writer is trying to tell 
the same wonderful story. “And Jehovah God” he 


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Evolution and Religion 


writes, “formed man out of the dust of the ground, and 
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man 
became a living soul.” He, too, lived in a pre-scientific 
age. Suppose he were living now. Would he still write, 
“Jehovah God created man out of the dust of the 
ground’? Almost certainly, no. But would he still 
write, “Jehovah God created man”? Without a doubt, 
yes. And was not that, after all, the one thing that he 
was supremely concerned to say? 

For what, then, shall we go to the Bible? For scien- 
tific information which its writers simply could not 
possess, living as they did in a pre-scientific age? Or 
for that stimulus to religious faith and that inspiration 
for noble living which leap from page to page of those 
glorious scriptures, in which many generations of 
questing spirits poured forth the deepest convictions 
of their hearts, and revealed an unparalleled insight 
into the heart of reality? In the light of evolution, 
what becomes of the Bible? Why, the Bible becomes, 
or rather remains, the greatest literary source in all 
the world of spiritual vision and moral power! 


v 

Let me now try to suggest a few ways in which the 
conception of evolution becomes a positive support for 
religious faith. 

It provides us, for one thing, with a nobler concep- 
tion of God. Think, first of all, of a God who dwells 
for unimaginable aeons in a kind of splendid isolation 
—a God without a world. One day, about four thou- 
sand years ago, he decided to create a world and did 
create one in one hundred and forty-four hours, after 
which he rested twenty-four hours. Then, from his 
elevated position above the world, he began to direct 
the world’s affairs, interfering from time to time with 

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its orderly processes in order to work a “miracle.” A 
somewhat capricious God; a God, moreover, who, being 
thought of as dwelling “up there,’ could only with 
extreme difficulty be thought of as present everywhere. 

With this conception of God, compare the conception 
made possible by the discovery of evolution. God has 
never dwelt in isolation. He has always created. The 
very necessity of his being has obliged him to create. 
Nor does God dwell somewhere above the world. He 
is as certainly in the world as a man is in his body— 
and as certainly more than the world as a man is more 
than his body. He is, therefore, not far away from any 
one of us; in him, quite literally, we live and move 
and have our being. And yet, he is more than we our- 
selves—more, far more, than the sum total of our 
humanity. And in what do we become aware of his 
existence? In occasional interferences with the laws of 
nature? No! In the universal order of the world; in 
the beauty and mystery of life; in the discovery of 
truth and the achievement of goodness; in the long, 
costly, sublime advance from mud to man, from sav- 
agery to civilization; above all, in Jesus. 

Is not this latter a far greater conception of God? 

And does not the thought of evolution give us a 
most helpful standpoint from which to view the evil 
of the world? It enables us, for one thing, to look at 
our world, not in the perspective of a few thousand 
years, but in the perspective of millions of years. On 
the supposition that God turned out a world complete 
in one hundred and forty-four hours, we cannot but 
wonder why it has taken him so long to perfect this 
world. But on the supposition that literally millions 
of years were required for this once molten planet to 
become sufficiently cool to make possible life; that 
other millions of years were required to provide an 

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Evolution and Religion 


environment that would make possible human life; 
that hundreds of thousands of additional years were 
required to bring human life up to a point where a 
written history of it was possible—on that supposition, 
can we not view with greater patience the manifold 
imperfections that yet remain? Can we not, indeed, 
enter at least a little way into the marvelous patience 
of God? 

And, observing the truly astonishing progress that 
has been, made since the first man turned his face from 
the clod, can we not dare to hope that the inspiring 
visions of prophets and poets will yet be realized in 
the years that are to be? “That is not first which is 
spiritual, but that which is natural.” First nature; 
then, at long last, human nature; then, in the fullness 
of time, the nature of Christ. Out of nature came 
human nature. Out of human nature came the char- 
acter of Christ. Is not the character of Christ a reve- 
lation of the meaning of life, and a prophecy of its 
eventual achievement? 

Just at this point the evolutionary conception comes 
to the support of that most daring of all the dreams of 
man—the dream of a world beyond this world in which 
progress may still go on; the dream of life after death, 
aye, of life in the midst of death, or life triumphant 
over death. 

It was none other than Darwin himself who declared, 
“Tt is an intolerable thought that man and all sentient 
beings are doomed to annihilation after such long con- 
tinued and slow process.” The evolutionist believes 
that the whole universe has labored to produce man: a 
creature endowed with memory, so that he is able to 
survey the past; endowed also with imagination, with 
creative intelligence, so that he is able to map out and, 
in some degree, to determine the future; a creature of 

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so rich and wonderful a nature that three score years 
and ten are far too short a time to enable him to satisfy 
his love of truth, his love of beauty, his love of love; a 
creature whose body links him to lower orders of crea- 
tion, but whose spirit transcends all that is of the 
earth, earthy and enables him to commune with God. 

And now, asks the evolutionist, what will the uni- 
verse do with its finest product? Cast him as rubbish 
to the void? What an outcome that of the travail of a 
universe! What an anti-climax that of the whole 
world process! What a gigantic failure that of the 
Power which hitherto has so directed the course of evo- 
lution that, in the face of seemingly insurmountable 
difficulties, a veritable son of God has appeared! What 
will the universe do with a man? It is an evolutionist 
who says, “Just as man’s body has nearly reached the 
goal of its terrestrial development, so his spirit may 
just be commencing a corresponding career that will 
continue hereafter.” 


VI 


Why, then, should anyone contemplate the fact of 
evolution with alarm? Far from banishing or even 
belittling God, it but adds to his glory. Far from 
degrading or even diminishing man, it but reveals his 
uniqueness, his imperishable significance. Far from 
destroying religion, it fortifies it. And what a mighty 
stimulus it brings to the most daring hopes of man- 
kind. The hope that though a man die, yet shall he 
live—how it kindles that! The hope that the dreams 
of prophetic spirits will yet be realized in a diviner 
civilization, the kingdom of God—how it lights up 
that! 


[ 356 ] 


GrorcE W. TRUETT 


Dr. Truett is pastor of one of the largest Protestant 
churches in the United States, the First Baptist of Dallas, 
Texas, with a membership of 4,500 persons, and a Sunday 
school enrollment of 6,000 pupils. The church makes an 
aggregate contribution of around $230,000 a year for its own 
maintenance and for benevolences. An elaborate group of 
buildings, covering a city block, houses the various activi- 
ties of the church, and despite the extraordinary capacity 
of the auditorium it is not infrequent that hundreds are 
turned away for lack of room. Dr. Truett has been pastor 
in that same parish for twenty-seven years. The celebra- 
tion of his quarter-centennial, in 1923, was made a city 
event, all churches and other groups of the community, and 
representatives of the city itself, as well as of the state and 
the Baptist denominations, sharing with enthusiasm in the 
hearty testimony paid to his character and work. Dr. 
Truett was born in North Carolina in 1867, and received 
his A.B. at Baylor University in 1897, being honored with 
the D.D. degree by his alma mater in 1899. Beginning his 
life on a farm, he had acquired sufficient education by the 
time he was eighteen to begin teaching. He founded a high 
school in Georgia and was its principal for three years. 
Early his gift in public speech disclosed itself, and he was 
brought to the attention of the Baptist denomination by a 
captivating address delivered at the Georgia State Conven- 
tion. Called to be financial secretary of Baylor University 
at Waco, Texas, on the ground that “wherever he speaks the 
people do what he asks them to do,” he worked until the 
college was freed from a debt of a half million dollars, and 
then resigned to become a student within its halls. At 


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the time of his graduation he was called to the First Church 
of Dallas, where he has remained until this day. 

Dr. Truett is primarily and above all a preacher. He 
administers a complex organization. He visits, as a true 
shepherd loves to do, the homes of his flock where he can 
render the comforts and inspirations of the Gospel. But 
his pulpit is his throne. The spirit of the South loves elo- 
quence, and it therefore produces men of eloquent lips. 
This spirit has found intense and passionate embodiment in 
Dr. Truett. Huis eloquence is a high art, albeit it grows out 
of instinct more than out of technical training. A maga- 
zine writer recently described him thus: 

“Once the man’s oratorical passions are aroused he 
attacks like a whirlwind. He comes on like a cavalry 
charge. You hear the beat of drums, the clatter of sabers, 
the huzzas of advancing hosts. The ground rocks and reels 
with the thunder and thud of ten thousand hoofs, and sud- 
denly there in the midst of you is that figure with the burn- 
ing cheek, the gleaming teeth, and the blazing eye, swinging 
high the sword of his flashing spirit and hacking his way 
to your heart. Pulpit and choir, transept and arch, audi- 
ence and organ, the very body of the man in his black alpaca 
coat, fade away. Only the glowing aura of a soul remains.” 

Two books bear his authorship—God’s Call to America, 
and The Quest for Souls. 


[ 358 ] 


AN ADEQUATE GOSPEL 
By Grorce W. Truett 


“T am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for 
it ws the power of God unto salvation to every one 
that believeth.”—Romans i, 16. 


The most glorious specimen of a gospel preacher the 
world has ever known was the apostle Paul. Dearer 
to him than his own life was the gospel of Christ. And 
he counted it as his chiefest privilege to proclaim that 
gospel everywhere. He counted himself a debtor to all 
men; and therefore, in all places, whether they were 
obscure or conspicuous, among all peoples, whether 
they were wise or unwise, whether they were peasants 
or philosophers, Paul counted it as his choicest delight 
to tell men about Christ. He told them about Christ 
in literary Athens, the city of foremost culture at that 
time in the world. Indeed, the first public conflict 
between paganism and Christianity came when Paul 
visited that city. On the one hand was Paul repre- 
senting Christ ; on the other hand were the philosophers 
of the Epicureans and Stoics, seeking to gainsay Paul’s 
message and utterly discredit it. Paul was not 
ashamed of Christ’s gospel, even in cultured Athens. 

Now he longs to try it out in Rome, the seven-hilled 
city, the city of mightiest power in that ancient time. 
He longed to witness for Christ in that city where 
Virgil sang and where Cicero thrilled the multitudes 

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with his eloquence; in that city where men put their 
trust in visible agencies of power and organization and 
pomp and majesty. He was not ashamed to try out 
this gospel against all the consolidated power of the 
Roman empire. 

Paul made this sublime confession of his faith when 
it meant the giving up of country—and he was an 
ardent patriot, as every man ought to be—when it 
meant the giving up of friends and loved ones. He 
made this confession when it meant the utter abjuring 
of a life of ease and personal aggrandizement for a life 
of toil and suffering to the end of his earthly days; and 
when it meant, finally, the laying down of his life for 
this gospel. 

Was Paul justified in his course? Can we vindicate 
him today? Let us as the professed friends and follow- 
ers of Christ make this question vitally personal. We 
profess to have committed our all to Christ, as our 
Savior and Lord forever. Are we justified in such 
creat adventure? Have we chosen the way of wisdom 
and safety and peace? Let us look again to our spirit- 
ual foundations, to the grounds of our faith. Paul’s 
noble confession points the way for us. 

And first, Paul was not ashamed of the author of the 
gospel. The author of that gospel is Christ. “I am not 
ashamed of the gospel of Christ.” Paul’s hope for time 
and eternity was in a person, and that person was 
Christ. What Hougoumont was to Waterloo, the per- 
son of Christ is to the whole conception of Christianity. 
From the Arian controversy in the fourth century, and 
even back to apostolic days, the battle theological has 
raged about the person of Christ. Historic, apostolic, 
supernatural Christianity stands or falls with the per- 
son of Christ. 

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An Adequate Gospel 


We would fearlessly take our stand and declare with- 
out hesitation, that the human race did not and could 
not produce Christ. If it could have produced one 
Christ, why has it not produced others equal to him? 
The task is too stupendous for the human race, because 
he is not only the Son of Man but he is also the Son of 
God; he is God the Son, God of God, Light of Light; 
he is Emmanuel—God with us. He was both God and 
man in one personality—the God-man. Never did 
hyphen elsewhere mean as much as it means here. It 
both joins and divides. It marks distinction and yet 
unity. The most stupendous truth ever submitted for 
human consideration is that stated in the five brief 
words: “The Word was made flesh.” No wonder Paul 
said: “Without controversy, great is the mystery of 
godliness; God was manifest in the flesh, justified in 
the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, 
believed on in the world, received up into glory.” 

Look at Christ’s words, any of them. ‘Never man 
spake like this man.’ Always and everywhere he 
assumed the attributes and perfections of deity. He 
affirmed his own omnipotence, omniscience, omnipres- 
ence. He affirmed that he was the one only adequate 
Savior for all mankind, their one rightful Master and 
Judge. His words bear the burden of the Godhead. 
No creature could sustain their weight. 


I 
Will you look at his works? There stands his chal- 
lenge: “Believe me for my work’s sake.” “A tree is 
known by its fruits.” This is the invincible test. What, 
then, shall be said of Christ’s works? From his cradle 
to his grave, the outflashings of his deity were again 
and again apparent. Jean Paul Richter was right 
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when he said that with Jesus’ pierced hands he had 
lifted empires off their hinges and turned the stream 
of centuries backward in its channel. And Lecky, too, 
was right when he said that the three short years of 
the public ministry of Jesus had done more to soften 
and regenerate mankind than all the disquisitions of 
all the philosophers and all the exhortations of all the 
moralists since the world began. 

Will you look at his character? There he stands 
flawless, flinging out his challenge: “Which of you 
convinceth me of sin?” And the universal response 
both from friends and from foes was made by Pilate: 
“T find no fault in him.” In himself he combines all 
those gracious qualities that abode severally in his 
people. Look at him, not a son of man, but The Son 
of Man, for all humanity was summed up in him. If 
we would look for the highest example of meekness, 
we would not look to Moses, but to Jesus who was 
unapproachably meek and lowly in heart. For the 
highest example of patience, we would not look to Job, 
but to Jesus, who, when he was reviled, reviled not 
again. For the highest example of wisdom, we would 
not look to Solomon, but to Jesus, who “‘spake as never — 
man spake.” For the highest example of soul-consum- 
ing pity, we would not look to Jeremiah, the weeping 
prophet, but to Jesus who wept alone over the ill- 
fated, doomed city of Jerusalem. For the highest 
example of zeal, we would not look to Paul, but to 
Jesus, of whom it was written: “The zeal of thine 
house hath eaten me up.” For the highest example 
of love, we would not look to John, but to Jesus, who 
so loved us. Men talk about their inability to believe 
in miracles. Pray, what will they do with Jesus? He 
is the miracle of the centuries. 

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An Adequate Gospel 


Is there anything in the Person of Christ to cause 
us shame? Here we unhesitatingly take our stand con- 
cerning the Person of Christ—we believe in his super- 
natural birth, in his absolute deity, in his vicarious, 
substitutionary death for sinners, in his bodily resur- 
rection, and in his personal return, in his own time, 
without sin unto salvation. And with Paul we would 
joyfully commit ourselves to him, asking nothing more 
in this world or the next but to know his will and faith- 
fully follow him forevermore. 


II 

Again, Paul was not ashamed of Christ’s gospel—of 
what it is and does for mankind, because “it is the 
power of God unto salvation to every one that believ- 
eth.” No easy sailing has it been for this gospel ship, 
since it was cast a tiny bark upon the ocean of life. 
Opposition has arrayed itself with all boastfulness and 
terror against the religion of Christ. A noted skeptic 
boasted in 1809, that in another hundred years there 
would not be a single Bible left in all the world, save 
those kept as curios in our museums. And yet, since 
he made that direful prophecy, approximately fifty 
times the number of Bibles the world ever knew before 
have been printed and scattered like the leaves of Val- 
lombrosa throughout the earth. There was another 
skeptic, a generation agone, who went up and down the 
land charging men a dollar a head to hear his lecture, 
as he sought to pull down the great temple of the Chris- 
tian religion. And yet, on the very spot where he 
wrote his polished address against the Christian 
religion there has stood for years a noble house of 
worship, and thousands and thousands have passed 
within its portals, and there have submissively 

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bowed down to Christ. Christ is moving on and on 
and on. 

Do you not agree that we do not have need of any 
“new gospel’ with which to win this weary, sinning 
world? You will recall that a few years ago there was 
created a considerable stir by the publication of a book- 
let written by a noted schoolman, the booklet being 
entitled, “The New Religion.” Its coming was hailed 
with many a trumpet. We hurried to the bookstores 
for it, immediately after its publication. But lo, there 
was nothing new about it! The author had borrowed 
its impotent platitudes from the Greek philosophers, 
and it was as arid as the desert of Sahara. Carlyle was 
right when he called all such gospels “the gospels of 
dirt.’ They have no dynamic, no adequate power, no 
redeeming and regenerative power. Christ crucified 
is the power of God in winning the world to him, and 
there is no other power that can doit. The unbearable 
yoke upon men is sin. The primary tragedy of the 
world is not ignorance, bad as ignorance is, nor is it 
poverty and poor wages. The primary tragedy of this 
world is sin, and man’s fundamental need is the need 
of a Savior and Redeemer from sin. In Christ and in 
him alone we have once for all, that adequate Savior, 
Christ crucified, the power of God. 

Hear Paul again: “For the Jews require a sign and 
the Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ 
crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto 
the Greeks foolishness, but unto them who are called, 
both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and 
the wisdom of God.” Now, we begin to understand 
why Paul shouts: “God forbid that I should glory, 
save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the 
world is crucified unto me and I unto the world.” In 

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An Adequate Gospel 


the face of the infinite meanings of that cross, we are 
able continually to sing with Isaac Watts: 
“When I survey the wondrous cross, 
On which the Lord of glory died, 
My richest gains I count but loss, 

And pour contempt on all my pride.” 
All the ethical culturists in the world could not, with 
their dainty gospels, produce one life like that of Carey 
or Judson or Livingstone, in an eternity of years. 

Let us mark carefully the point that we cannot apply 
the glowing words, “the power of God unto salvation,” 
to any gospel except the gospel of Christ. Let it be 
repeated, times without count, that any and every 
gospel which denies or obscures the incarnation and 
death and resurrection of Christ, is not, never was, and 
never will be, a religion of conquering power in the 
world. Paul would keep us to the central, vital, fun- 
damental content of this glorious gospel of Christ. 
Mark his words: “For I delivered unto you, first of 
all, that which I also received, how that Christ died 
for our sins, according to the scriptures, and that he was 
buried, and that he rose again the third day, according 
to the scriptures.” There is the briefest possible state- 
ment of the fundamental content of this glorious gos- 
pel. The early disciples went forth with that gospel, a 
gospel of facts, and they declared those mighty facts: 
Christ died for our sins, and rose again, the grave being 
emptied of its contents. And with those vital facts, 
they so witnessed in that pagan, hostile world, that 
men everywhere repented and turned to Christ. In 
one short generation, with that gospel, the Roman 
empire was shot through with spiritual life. 

Do you not also agree that much of our preaching 
is too newspaperish? That it is too much given to 

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little scraps of discussion about the transient and super- 
ficial? That it does not stretch out into the eternities? 
That it fails to have the tone of the preaching of God’s 
Book? We are not primarily to be social agitators or 
reformers. The two outstanding gospel preachers 
whom Britain recently gave to the world—Charles 
Haddon Spurgeon and Alexander MacLaren—held for- 
ever fast to the fundamental content of the gospel of 
Christ. Their primary insistence was that all men 
must be born again. When men are born again, it 
will be as natural for them to bear fruit to the praise of 
God as for a well-pruned tree in the orchard to bring 
forth its fruits in due season. We have much preach- 
ing of ethics and social service in these times. This 
is well only as it is the corollary and application of 
the gospel of the crucified and risen Christ. Doctrine 
without duty is a tree without fruits. But it is also 
true that a tree without doctrine is a tree without roots. 
There is a longing in all of our hearts for peace. War 
is ghastly, it is horrible. The whole world groaneth 
and travaileth in pain for the ending of war. And it 
must end, and, please God, it shall end! Inspiring 
beyond words is the prophecy that the golden age 
comes on apace when men shall beat their swords into 
plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; when 
nations shall not lift up sword against nation and men 
will learn war no more. 
Glad prophecy! To this at last, 
The Reader said, shall all things come; 
Forgotten is the bugle’s blast, 
And battle-music of the gun; 
A little while the world shall run 
Its old mad way, with needle-gun 


And iron-clay, but peace at last shall reign, 
The cradle-song of Christ has not been sung in vain. 


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An Adequate Gospel 


But when did the prophet say that day was to be? 
When enemies were crushed on the battlefield? No, 
but when the nations shall learn righteousness and 
shall walk in the Lord’s paths. The one great mediator 
between man and man, between nation and nation, is 
Christ Jesus. He is the mighty Daysman, the great 
Reconciler, the Center of Unity. When men really 
love him they will love one another also. 

Certainly, we are ready at any hour to lift up our 
voices in championship of every effort on earth that 
suggests any hope for the ending of war and the win- 
ning of an enduring peace among men. But our pri- 
mary hope does not rest in legislation, in diplomacy, in 
commerce, in secular education, important as all these 
agencies are, but our hope is in the gospel of the Son 
of God. Both wisdom and faithfulness have fled from 
God’s people if they do not put their primary emphasis 
on sending the messengers of Christ with the story of 
his redeeming life and love to all the nations. 

The story is told that in one of our well-known art 
galleries an old man was one day seen gazing earnestly 
at a picture of the thorn-crowned Christ. Involunta- 
rily, the expression broke from his lips: “Bless him, I 
love him!” A stranger standing near heard the old 
man’s words, and clasped his hand and said: “Brother, 
I love him too.” And then a third and a fourth, and 
still others, who before had been strangers to one 
another, were brought together by their common love 
for the crucified Lord. That is a parable and a proph- 
ecy of what is going to come to pass throughout all 
the earth. When Christ’s love is fully shed abroad in 
men’s hearts by the Holy Ghost, armies will cease to 
be, guns will be allowed to rust, dreadnoughts will be 
sent to the discard, money now spent on munitions of 

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war will be spent, not to spread death, but to enrich 
and gladden life. Judah shall not vex Ephraim and 
Ephraim shall not envy Judah. Some day, through 
the power of the gospel of Christ, one nation shall say 
to another: “Bless him, I love him!” America will 
say it to Germany. And Germany will say it to 
Britain. And Britain will say it to France. And all 
around the earth the nations shall learn war no more, 
and they shall learn it at the cross of Christ. 

_ The gospel of Christ is the one only adequate remedy 
for every need and condition of mankind. It has given 
birth to spiritual kingdoms. It has laid the corner- 
stone of our highest civilization. It has founded insti- 
tutions of learning. It has inspired our best literature. 
It has emancipated the slave. It has conserved child- 
hood, dignified womanhood, and glorified the home. 
Among all peoples and in all lands it has accomplished 
social and moral transformations which to the human 
viewpoint have seemed impossible. There is just one 
sufficient explanation for the triumphs of Christ’s 
gospel: “It is the power of God unto salvation.” The 
world’s hope is to be found only in the saviorhood and 
lordship of Christ. 


III 


Once again, the crowning glory of Christ’s gospel is 
that it may be fully tested and proved in the crucible 
of experience. “It is the power of God unto salvation 
to every one that believeth.” Here is the final and 
supreme test of the power of Christ’s gospel—the test 
in personal experience. Paul could say and you and 
I can say: “According to my gospel.” Christ submits 
himself to the scientific test of demonstration by experi- 
ment. His call is: “Come and see.” The scientists 

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An Adequate Gospel 


ask for facts. Very well, we will confront them with 
the vital fact of personal, Christian experience. Exper- 
ience is the one datum of all science and philosophy. 
Men may call as long and earnestly as they will on 
Confucius, or Mohammed, or Plato, or anybody else, 
for salvation, but there will be no answer. Let a man 
honestly call on Christ for forgiveness and deliverance 
from the guilt and power of sin, and Christ answers, 
and the man knows that Christ answers. The man 
goes his way with the joyful ery: “One thing I know, 
that whereas I was blind, now I see.” 

The question is sometimes asked: Will pentecostal 
power ever be repeated? The answer is that pentecos- 
tal power shall be given again when Christ’s people 
will in the right spirit undertake the pentecostal task. 
That task is the evangelization of the whole earth. If 
Jesus should visibly stand before his people today and 
summon them as once he summoned the disciples of 
his own personal ministry, what, think you, would be 
the words that he would speak unto us? It would 
indeed be a majestic, an awful hour. Surely, we would 
listen for his words with every faculty of our beings. 
Surely, we would hide them in our deepest hearts and 
cherish them in our memories forever. By day we 
should think of them and by night dream of them. 

Although our eyes are holden today, and we cannot 
see him, yet that same Jesus stands in our midst this 
hour, with hands uplifted, let us prayerfully hope, to 
bless us; and he repeats his great commission to us. 
What shall be our answer to him today, and all the 
remaining days of our earthly lives? In this spacious 
and responsible hour, shall we not humbly and utterly 
rededicate our all to him, that his redeeming gospel 
may be made triumphant to the ends of the earth? 

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What is the answer to his preachers? What is the 
answer of business and professional men and women? 
What is the answer of young men and women? There 
are groups of Christians in many communities, we 
must believe, who, if their powers were all released and 
fully consecrated to Christ, would soon, like his dis- 
ciples of old, turn the world upside down. Garibaldi 
and one thousand men were enough to change the his- 
tory of Italy. Gideon and three hundred men were 
_ enough to overthrow the hosts of Midian. John Wes- 
ley said if you would give him one hundred men whose 
only fear was that they might sin, and whose only con- 
cern was to do the will of Christ, that he would quickly 
shake the world with Christ’s gospel. The traveler in 
beautiful Edinburgh stands reverently in an old grave- 
yard surrounding the building of the notable and his- 
toric Greyfriars church. It was in that open church- 
yard, several generations agone, that a multitude of 
mighty men signed the national covenant, the old Earl 
of Sutherland, himself, leading the way. As you gaze 
upon them, do you see what they are doing? They are 
opening the veins of their own arms and signing the 
covenant with their own blood! And shall Christ’s 
people, redeemed by his own blood, hesitate for one 
moment to give unto him their every talent, their 
money, their learning, their love, their lives, their all, 
that he may see the travail of his soul and be satisfied? 


The work that centuries might have done, 
Should crowd the hour of setting sun. 


With joyful and courageous faith in him, let us go to 
our world-task, saying with Wesley, “The world is our 
parish,” and remembering also to say: “And best of 
all, God is with us.” We are in no losing battle. “He 

[ 370 ] 


An Adequate Gospel 


must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet.” 
Mark the words again: “all enemies under his feet.” 
Wars and intemperance and ignorance and every form 
of sin and selfishness and finally death are doomed to 
be under his feet. “He must reign till he hath put all 
enemies under his feet.” Every kingdom of evil shall 
yet go down before him. All the Babylons of iniquity 
are doomed to fail. The baleful shadow of heathenism 
shall yet be driven out of every land, by the rising, 
conquering Sun of Righteousness. His name shall 
endure forever. His dominion shall extend from sea 
to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. 
Human history is predestined to end as the apocalypse, 
with a great song of joy and triumph that shall fill all 
the earth and ring throughout all the heavens: “Halle- 
lujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!” 


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A 45 ) 





JAMES ISAAC VANCE 


Born at Bristol, Tennessee, in 1862, while his father was 
away fighting in the Confederate Army, a child of recon- 
struction and poverty, the career of Dr. Vance is the story 
of a determined spirit struggling against difficulties and 
rising from achievement to achievement and recognized 
leadership. He was graduated at King College, Tennessee, 
with his A.B. degree in 1883, and received his A.M. degree 
from the same institution in 1886. His ministerial training 
was received at Union Theological Seminary, in Virginia, 
where he graduated in 1886. King College gave him the 
D.D. degree, as did also Hampden-Sidney College, both in 
1896, and King followed it in 1913 with LL.D. 

Dr. Vance was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry 
in 1886 and held pastorates successively in Wytheville, 
Alexandria and Norfolk, all in Virginia. He was in the 
midst of his flourishing pastorate at Norfolk when a call 
came from First Presbyterian Church, Nashville, Tennessee, 
which he accepted in 1894, ministering there for six years. 
He was called to the North Reformed Church, Newark, 
New Jersey, and accepted. With the passing of the decade 
between 1900 and 1910 an unusual thing happened: he was 
invited to return to his former Nashville parish. Lured by 
the memory of old affections as well as by the prospect of 
significant service, he yielded to his former people’s per- 
suasions. There he has done the great work of his life in 
the fifteen years of his second pastorate. His church is 
located on the busiest corner in the downtown section. 
Across the street is the largest theatre in Nashville. In 
the winter of 1925 Dr. Vance moved his Sunday evening 
congregation to this theatre, augmented his quartette choir 
with a chorus of fifty voices, invited the public to fill the 


[ 373 | 


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seats—and they did, with more public than seats. For 
Sunday night after Sunday night, from January to Easter, 
these services, evangelistic in character, continued. Dr. 
Vance, though not an evangelist in the special sense, knows, 
as every Christian preacher ought to know, how to “cast the 
net.” This indispensable exercise of all true evangelical 
preaching resulted in the commitment of many hundreds 
of persons to a personal decision for Christ. The outcome 
of the experiment was-so fruitful and gratifying that it is 
Dr. Vance’s intention to repeat the doing of it in the same 
theatre each season. 

Dr. Vance’s interests and services have extended far 
beyond his local parish. There are few men in positions of 
large pastoral responsibility who have shared in so many 
general movements of his own denomination and the gen- 
eral church as has he. To name the committees of national 
and denominational significance on which he has served, 
and still serves, would be like making a catalogue of all our 
good causes. His membership on the United Welfare Coun- 
cil during the war put into his mind the conception which 
later materialized in the Interchurch World Movement, a 
project which held more hope for American Protestantism 
than any united undertaking ever proposed to the churches, 
and which met defeat on the rocks of our sectarian near- 
sightedness. Dr. Vance was moderator of the General 
Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States 
in 1918. He is the author of Royal Manhood, The Rise of 
a Soul, The Eternal in Man, Life’s Terminals, The Life of 
Service, The Breaking of Bread, Being a Preacher. 


[ 374] 


THE OLD RUGGED CROSS 
By Jamss I. VANcE 


“And he, bearing his cross, went forth into a 
place called the place of a skull, which is called in 
the Hebrew Golgotha.”—John xix, 17. 


Stained, shamed, discredited, rejected, his foes in a 
frenzy of glee over his fall, his friends in a frenzy of 
fear over his defeat, his strength gone, his body broken, 
Christ staggers on over the rough stones of the narrow 
street, under the crushing load of his heavy cross, 
toward a spot so grim and ghastly and hideous that 
the Romans called it Calvary, and the Jews, Golgotha, 
the place of a skull. Such is the picture. It must 
never be forgotten. We must never allow its colors 
to grow dim or its fierce lines to fade. We must never 
swap the peasant Messiah for a mere halo Christ. It 
is a picture before which you can fall on your knees. 
It is a sight to break your heart. It is a scene to cap- 
ture and command the soul. “And he, bearing his 
cross, went forth into a place called the place of a 
skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha.” 


MOCKERY OF MODERN JERUSALEM 

It is all so different now. When one goes back to 
the place where all this transpired, and seeks for Christ 
amid the gaudy shrines which men have built, and 
stands on spots whose only claim to sanctity is a doubt- 
ful tradition, and listens to the clamor of the beggars 


[ 375 ] 


The American Pulpit 


about the door of the church of the holy sepulchre, and 
follows the dirty priests with their dim candles and 
drops into their itching palms a coin, it is disgust rather 
than reverence that fills him. He must have found 
Christ elsewhere, if faith is to survive, and his imagina- 
tion must be able to pick the infinite out of the sordid 
and to discover the spiritual back of the sensual, if 
he is to feel in any way that the ground whereon he 
stands is holy. 

Even art has led us far from the virile and rugged 
_ slmplicities of that day in old Jerusalem when the 
broken Christ carried his cross down the winding Via 
Sacra and on to the place of a skull. Art spiritualizes. 
It would hide the skull with flowers. It would still the 
pain with perfume. It would cover the gaunt cross 
with climbing, clinging vines. Art places a halo on 
the brow of death. It is well for us to have this, too. 
It is well to treasure the cross in art, to see the unseen, 
as art interprets Christ; to listen past his frenzied foes 
shouting, “Crucify him!”; to look beyond his seared 
friends watching, with their hearts in their faces, their 
hopes die; to see further than the stained figure of the 
defeated Christ and behold the radiant figure of the 
reigning Christ, meanwhile watching the grim contour 
of a cross change into the gleam of a crown. 


HOLDING FAST THE REAL 

But we must not be so absorbed with the ideal as to 
lose the real. We must not let art lure us so far from 
reality as to forget the rugged cross on which they 
nailed the worn body of a Man who had come by a 
long and hard and weary road to his Golgotha. We 
must not become so enamored of the cross in art as 
to forget there was a cross stained and dripping with 

[ 376 ] 


The Old Rugged Cross 


blood. We must not make so much of the little colored 
crosses painted on glass and canvas, or the architec- 
tural crosses topping church spires, or the little jeweled 
crosses hanging from fat necks, that we forget the rude 
cross, splintered and rough-hewn, coarse and inartistic, 
on which the body of the Son of God hung in holy 
explation for the sin of the world. We must not allow 
our Christianity to become so soft, so artistic, so dille- 
tante, so lacking in grim reality, so empty of the rich, 
red blood of Calvary, as to forget the old rugged 
cross. ‘And he, bearing his cross, went forth into a 
place called the place of a skull, which is called in the 
Hebrew, Golgotha.” 

Christianity is a rugged religion. It is built around 
a rugged cross—not around a throne, but a cross, not 
around an altar, a church, but around a place of expia- . 
tion, not around a pageant of victory, but around a 
scene of defeat. The actual cross on which Christ 
hung has long since rotted and turned to dust. Jesus 
never meant his disciples to dwindle down into a race 
of relic-hunters and site-worshipers. The sanctities 
he would have them cherish are truth, and goodness, 
and virtue, and purity, and charity, and good will, and 
love, and service. The service he would have them 
render is to the living—not to whited skeletons long 
deserted of their animating souls, and the God he 
would have them worship is not a cult hidden in robe 
and ritual, but the great Spirit who must be wor- 
shiped “in spirit and in truth.” 


THE CHRIST OF TODAY 

Christ is to be found now no less than when he was 

here in the flesh. He is still to be found amid the 

simple and homely and rugged scenes of our common 
[377 ] 


The American Pulpit 


humanity. If you would find him, seek for him not 
so much in the galleries of art, not so much in the pal- 
aces of power, and pomp, not so much in vast cathe- 
drals whose steepled silence and Gothic splendors cast 
a spell on the senses. Seek him rather in some car- 
penter’s shop, on some humble street, in some fisher- 
man’s boat, where men worn with fruitless toil long 
for a better day. Seek him beside some well where 
waits a thirsty heart. Seek him where there are little 
-children who need a friend, and sick people who need a 
physician, and burden-bearers who cry for rest. Seek 
him where there are souls to save and hearts to comfort. 

So many make the mistake of Brewer Mattocks’ 


parish priest: 


The parish priest of Austerity, 
Climbed up in a high church steeple 
To be nearer to God, 

So that he might hand 

His word down to His people. 


When the sun was high, when the sun was low, 
The good man sat unheeding 

Sublunary things; 

From transcendency 

Was he forever reading. 


And now and again, when he heard the creak 
Of the weather vane a-turning, 

He closed his eyes, 

And said: “Of a truth, 

From God I now am learning.” 


And in sermon script he daily wrote 
What he thought was sent from heaven, 
And he dropped this down 
On his people’s heads 
Two times one day in seven. 

[ 378 ] 


The Old Rugged Cross 


In his age God said: “Come down and die!” 
And he cried from out the steeple: 

“Where art Thou, Lord?” 

And the Lord replied: 

“Down here among my people!” 


Christianity is rugged with its hatred of shams and 
hypocrisies and artificialities, with its stern demand for 
simplicity and sincerity and genuineness. It washes off 
the paint. It tears aside the mask. It strips off the 
veneer, and says: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so 
ishe.” There is an eye that “slumbers not nor sleeps,” 
and that eye pierces all disguises. In a church I once 
served there was a rough fellow, a boiler engineer, a 
little Frenchman from Canada. His career had been 
checkered. Often he borrowed money from me, but 
always, sooner or later, the score was paid. For months 
he would be without a job. He was holding his job at 
sixty dollars a month, and paying half his wages toward 
the rent and support of a plumber friend who seemed 
to be without work. Peter naturally was interested in 
getting this friend a job, and several times thought he 
had succeeded; but, for some reason or other, the 
plumber did not tarry long at any position found for 
him. Finally Peter grew suspicious, and confided in 
me his doubts. He said: “I am afraid George does 
not want to work.” I said: “Peter, give him one more 
trial. He may fool us, but he cannot fool God.” Jump- 
ing to his feet, his little black eyes snapping like fire, 
he cried out as though he had made a brand new dis- 
covery: “No, Doc, he can fool us, but he can never 
fool God, can he?” Christianity is the religion of a 
searchlight, stern and uncompromising, whose God 
cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allow- 
ance. 

[ 379 ] 


The American Pulpit 


A RUGGED RELIGION 

Christianity is rugged, with great truths that thrust 
in, out of the infinite, taller and wider and bigger than 
the measure of man’s mind. These great truths are 
beyond our comprehension, but not our apprehension. 
We cannot understand them, but we can possess them, 
and build on them, as on a bed-rock foundation, an 
experience of triumphant assurance which shouts in 
the face of every doubt: “I know whom I have 

believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that 
- which I have committed unto him against that day!” 

Christianity is rugged in the red-blooded virtues it 
inculcates—common honesty, unpurchasable integrity, 
uncompromising conviction, zeal for righteousness, and 
a devotion to truth which does not back down at death. 
It puts a spine into character. It enables a man to 
stand alone and face the crowd, “not with eye service 
as men pleasers, but as the servants of Christ, doing the 
will of God from the heart.” 

It is stern in its grim and rugged demand for plain 
devotedness to duty. Christianity teaches that a man 
must do his duty at whatever cost. The question is 
not whether duty be pleasant, whether it be popular, 
whether it be profitable. Is it duty? Then it has the 
right of way. It calls for that sort of desperate faith 
which says: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust 
him.” 

It is rugged with a consecration that has more than 
phrases to offer, that digs down deep into sacrifice and 
surrender, that burns all bridges behind it, that puts 
life itself in pawn, and says with Paul: “What things 
were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ; yea, 
doubtless and I count all things but loss for the excel- 
lency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.” 

[ 380 ] 


The Old Rugged Cross 


It is rugged in the heroic tasks to which it summons 
us. It calls for more than a creed subscription. <A 
Christian must do more than shout for orthodoxy and 
sit back in cushioned ease on fat endowments, smok- 
ing good cigars and defending “the faith once delivered 
to the saints.” These tasks are not finished until Cal- 
vary is reached. The kind of saint Christianity pro- 
duces is not a sallow face under a dim halo, but a heart 
courageous and a soul heroic, one who judges that 
because Christ died for all, “then were al! dead, and 
that he died for all that they which live should not 
henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which 
died for them and rose again.” 


A TALE OF ROME 
Christianity is rugged in the devotion it demands 
for the Hero of the old rugged cross. Last summer I 
spent a morning amid the gigantic ruins of the coliseum 
at Rome. Begun by Vespasian in 69 and finished by 
Titus in 80, it became one of the greatest playhouses 
on earth. Five thousand animals were slain in the 
shows connected with its dedication. I could see the 
chambers underground where the wild beasts were con- 
fined, and also the doors where the Christian martyrs 
entered to fight with wild beasts, that amusement 
might be furnished the hundred thousand spectators 
who crowded the vast amphitheatre. As I wandered 
amid the ruins, trying to visualize scenes that had taken 
place there long ago, I recalled the story of the 
wrestlers. 
It is said that one day news reached the emperor 
that all the gladiators, forty in number, had become 
Christians. He immediately sent word that they must 


[ 381 ] 


The American Pulpit 


give up their faith in Christ, and, failing to do so, they 
would be placed in charge of a Roman guard and taken 
to the wildest and bleakest spot that could be found in 
the mountains of northern Italy, and there, amid the 
eternal snows, without food or shelter, they were to 
be turned out to die of starvation and exposure. ‘~The 
message was delivered. To a man, they stood true. 
The emperor’s order was carried out. In charge of the 
soldiers, they were taken up, up, until the wildest and 
bleakest spot that could be found in the Alps was 
- reached, and there they were dismissed to their fate. 
That night as the Roman officer lay sleeping in his 
tent, his dreams were disturbed by a weird chant that 
seemed to be borne in on the night winds. As he came 
to consciousness, this is what he heard: “Forty 
wrestlers wrestling for Christ ask of him the victory 
and claim for him the crown.” Wide awake now, it 
came with greater distinctness. The men he had 
turned out to die were singing, and this was their vic- 
tory song. He began to think of the devotion which 
must animate men who under such circumstances 
could sing such a song. He knew something of the 
devotion of a Roman soldier to the empire, but he 
knew that a Roman soldier was a total stranger to 
the kind of enthusiasm that was flaming in the breasts 
of those men out there in the night and the cold. While 
he was musing, a poor wretch fell through the flap 
of his tent on the floor, half dead, beside him and 
begged permission to recant. “Art thou the only one 
that durst ask this?” he said. ‘The only one, sire,” 
the frozen wretch replied. Then, leaping to his feet, 
tearing his military cloak from his shoulders and cast- 
ing it on the poor apostate there on the ground, he 


[ 382 ] 


The Old Rugged Cross 


cried: “By the gods, I will have thy place!” And out 
into the night he went, and soon again the chant 
unbroken sounded out amid those bleak peaks: “Forty 
wrestlers wrestling for Christ ask of him the victory 
and claim for him the crown.” 

This is the kind of devotion that fits the old rugged 
cross, and when the Christian church can furnish such 
enthusiasm, can rally with such undying courage, the 
world will crown Christ king. Since Christianity is 
this kind of religion, it can save you. It can save any- 
body. It can change the world. It can make the worst 
best. It can save “unto the uttermost.” It can grapple 
with ages of error, and slavery, and oppression, and 
throw off the yoke, and snap chains, and bring in the 
great emancipation. 


NOT A CULT 

Christianity is not a cult to entertain us with novel- 
ties, or befog us with mysteries, or enslave us with tra- 
ditions. It does not hide away in the silence of stately 
shrines, in the dim cells of asceticism, to tantalize with 
shadows or startle with pantomimes. Christianity is 
rugged with the realism of Calvary, a real birth, a real 
life, a real death, a real resurrection, a real redemption. ’ 
This must be kept forever before the faces of men. 
And so Christ would call us back again and again to 
that procession through the narrow streets and out 
to the place of a skull. 

It is a bankrupt religion that has no cross. It is a 
stale religion that has grown so used to the cross as to 
be no longer thrilled by its gaunt arms and grim trag- 
edy. It isa spent religion that has become so cultured 
as to be powerless to reproduce. It is a Christless 
religion that has no Calvary. Back to the old rugged 

[ 383 ] 


The American Pulpit 


cross! ‘And he, bearing his cross, went forth into a 
place called the place of a skull, which is called in the 
Hebrew Golgotha.” 


I will cherish the old rugged cross, 
Till my trophies at last I lay down; 
I will cling to the old rugged cross, 
And exchange it some day for a crown. 


[ 384 ] 





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